


The Road Trip

by Andabella30



Category: Homeland
Genre: Alternate Universe - Happy, Arguments, Car Accidents, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Happy Ending, Road Trips, Romance, occasional smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:46:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 30,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26953090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andabella30/pseuds/Andabella30
Summary: This starts with an alternate ending for episode 4-12, in which Carrie reveals a secret she's been harboring since 4-11, goes on to handle two watershed moments in her life just a little bit differently, and ends up on a road trip with Quinn.I think I know how it will end, but what happens between then and now is completely up to Carrie and Quinn.Chapter 12 is new 12/29/20.
Relationships: Carrie Mathison/Peter Quinn
Comments: 19
Kudos: 55





	1. Don’t Pressure Me

**Previously, on Homeland**

_The phone rings. Carrie, stretched out on the motel bed, leans to the other side and picks up her phone from the bedside table._

_-Quinn._

_-Hi._

_-Hey._

_-There’s a rumor you’re in Missouri._

_-Yeah I found out where my mom is._

_-And drove there?_

_-Yeah, it’s out of the blue, I know. I should have called you...it's just been a whirlwind._ _How are you?_

_-Wondering about you._

_-Yeah. we should talk, obviously._

_-You want me to join you? I could fly out._

_-Uh, no, no._

_-Are you sure?_

_-Yeah--I’m kind of in the middle of something--I have a brother, it turns out._

_-What?_

_-Yeah, see I have a lot to deal with; I can’t think about anything else right now._

_-Hey, look, if it’s a no, just say._

_-It’s not. I've just been dealing with this other stuff._

_-No problem._

_-Look at me, Quinn. I’m on a crazy road trip like my dad used to take. I’m no good for you, or anyone else._

_-So it is a no?_

_-I didn’t say that. Don’t pressure me, okay?_

_-Okay._

_-Look, I gotta go. I’ll be back in a few days. We’ll talk then._

_-Right._

_-Bye._

After she disconnects, Carrie sits back on the bed. She stares at her phone, then opens it up to the call list. Her call with Quinn lasted two minutes and twenty-four seconds. It was a short call, but she feels reassured by the fact that he _had_ called. That he was thinking of her. That he was looking for her. She thinks of their kiss for the hundredth time, and her eyelids flutter briefly at the accompanying wash of desire. 

She smiles a small smile, and lays her phone down. She will talk to Quinn soon enough, but now she wants to plan what she will say to her mother. She wants to make sure that no question goes unasked. She finds a pad of note paper and a pen, and starts to list her questions. _Why do you have another child? Why weren’t Maggie and I worth staying for? Why didn’t you come to me when I was sick?_

But before long, she realizes that her mind is more interested in her phone call with Quinn. It keeps jumping there, like a puppy, ignoring her wish to prepare her offense against her mother. Instead, her brain keeps dragging her back to Quinn, and the phone call that is nagging at her.

Finally, she puts down the pen. She’s going to have to wing it with her mother. After all, she has rehearsed this conversation a million times over the last fifteen years. 

Instead, she gives her brain what it wants. She replays the conversation with Quinn several times, thinking first about the words, and then, as she might with a phone call with an asset, about the inconsistencies between Quinn’s words and his tone. She thinks about their earlier conversation back home at the truck, with Quinn’s kiss and Quinn’s proposition hanging in the air. She analyzes, as she would with any other set of facts she was trying to fit into a coherent story, what it might mean for Peter Quinn to make a proposal like that. To her. With their history.

And the only theory that makes sense to her now, sitting in a motel in Missouri, the only one that accounts for nearly every minute they’ve ever spent together, is so unthinkable that she actually shakes her head. 

_That is ridiculous_ , she says to herself. 

But then she knows that it’s true, and she understands what she has done. 

She understands, suddenly and plainly, that thirty-six hours ago, while Quinn had not actually said “I love you,” he had said “I love you” so loudly, with such ringing clarity, that it had deafened her. And now, in the quiet of this shit-brown motel room, she can finally hear what Quinn had said back home at the truck, and she can see, so clearly, that if he is in love with her, and if “getting out together” was a declaration of his feelings, that anything less than an immediate, full-throated yes was a dagger to his heart. And when he called her today, already weakened by the wound she had inflicted, she understands that telling him not to pressure her, as though he were a...pest, must have broken his heart in the same way it was breaking hers now.

Because until this moment, Carrie has not understood that Quinn loves her. 

She has only known she loves Quinn. 

Carrie learned she was in love with Peter Quinn the afternoon she and two embassy guards ambushed him in Astrid’s garage. Her plan had been to dissuade him from an ill-considered course of action, even if it meant returning him bodily to the embassy.

While she failed spectacularly in her goal, a complex emotional chain-reaction to events in that garage led her to a multi-part epiphany: that Quinn was the purest and strongest person she’d ever known; that the loss of his respect and good will would feel like being jettisoned alone into the coldest, darkest spot in the universe; and that, as she watched Quinn stroll out of that garage, two oversized security guards on the ground beside her, panting from the pain he’d inflicted, she realized that she wanted a better life for him. She did not want Quinn to think that this was what he was meant for. She did not want him to believe that he had to hurt people to be valuable. She wanted him to be happy. 

Carrie couldn’t say she’d ever wanted Brody to be _happy,_ exactly. She’d just wanted him to be hers. What she felt about Quinn was different: it made her feel good, it didn’t hurt anyone, it didn’t feel obsessive, and it probably wasn’t going to send her to a psych ward. (Although another lesser epiphany in the garage was how turned on she’d been when Quinn put his hand around her throat and told her she needed to listen. It was a little kinky, maybe, but every girl has her thing. She was sure she could handle it.)

The craziest part, though, was that all these bright, blinding insights coalesced in Carrie’s heart in an instant, there in Astrid’s garage, while she was tending to the guard Quinn had just shot, and her heart, impish little bitch that it was, ran that news right back up the flagpole and announced to the rest of her, in no uncertain terms, that she was in love with Peter Quinn. Without question. Take that, little lady. Because now he’s gone, and he’s really fucking pissed at you.

And then her father, her lovely, loving, lovable father, who gave her everything he had, including some shit she wished he hadn’t, died. The shock and immediacy of that grief, and the logistics of getting home, and the joy of holding her daughter, and the bittersweet experience of sorting through her father’s belongings, and her fury at seeing her mother show up fifteen years too late...well, all of that forced her to throw her brand-new, spaghetti-tangled feelings about Being In Love with Quinn into a suitcase to be unpacked later. 

So, back home at the truck, when Quinn kissed her and put his hands in her hair and told her _“We get out together,”_ she suddenly remembered that her Being In Love With Quinn suitcase needed to be unpacked and sorted, and she needed a little time for that. This was an opportunity she did not want to squander. She did not want to fuck it up. 

But she still didn’t get that Quinn was making a declaration. If Quinn’s proposal to ‘get out together’ sprung from hidden romantic feelings, wouldn’t this be the time to express them explicitly? What kind of man would propose a romantic partnership without mentioning the romantic part? So obviously, it was not romantic. Quinn did not say that he loved her because he didn’t love her. How could he? She’d fucked a married, on-the-lam terrorist while he and Saul and a handful of other colleagues listened; she’d forced him to shoot her; she orphaned a college student with a drone strike, seduced him, then led him to his death, all while Quinn watched in disgust; she would have dropped a bomb on Saul if Quinn hadn’t physically stopped her. She knew he had seen her psychotic and raving, and catatonic and drooling. She knew that, even at her healthiest, she took advantage of everyone who cared for her. And she knew, worst of all, that she’d almost done something that no one knew, not even Quinn--something she could barely admit to herself. Carrie knew she was not lovable, certainly not by Quinn the Incorruptible. Quinn the Constant. 

She was not surprised that Quinn kissed her, of course. Everyone they’d worked with acknowledged, openly or not, their contentious chemistry. If Islamabad Station was giving out awards for Pair Most Likely to Hate-Fuck in a Utility Closet, it was going to Carrie Mathison and Peter Quinn. So a kiss, even one that was clearly not a hate-fuck kiss, didn’t signify any new information about Quinn’s feelings toward her, at least not to Carrie. He had told her to go fuck herself too many times, in too many ways, for her to believe that he was masking tender feelings. That only happened in the movies. Real people didn’t do that. A man who liked a woman made it clear: he was kind to her, and offered to help her, and spoke to her with affection. Quinn spoke to her with respect, and sometimes admiration, and he was, as he’d said to her once, very reliable. But he’d never spoken to her with anything she recognized as affection. 

Even so, the minute _“We get out together”_ came out of Quinn’s mouth, Carrie knew she was going to say yes. Of course she was going to say yes. She had...feelings, and even though she thought he was proposing something like a two-person support group for ex-Agency employees that also involved kissing, she’d be a special kind of idiot not to take advantage of this. She didn’t know exactly what ‘getting out together’ looked like in Quinn’s mind, but it sounded to her like it involved spending time together doing normal stuff. And based on that kiss—the knee-weakening, head-spinning kiss that preceded the offer—it was also pretty clear it involved sex. So, yes, she was in for as long as it lasted.

Because that was the other thing—Carrie had no reason to believe that this was going to be an arrangement of any duration. Like the worst kind of pop-up ad, what Astrid had said about Quinn had hijacked Carrie’s thoughts a dozen times since Quinn had kissed her and said they should ‘get out together’:

_He will never get out. But every so often, it makes him feel better to say he will._

So, no, Carrie was not foolish enough to believe that what Quinn was proposing would last for long. 

But, even so, she was in. 

Quinn might not love her now (how could he?) but, perhaps, if she got her mind right and fixed herself, he could. One day.

That meant that Carrie’s only hesitation, back home at the truck, was about wanting to start this thing properly. She wanted to preserve her dignity, protect Franny, and ensure that what she actually felt for Quinn did not complicate whatever ‘get out together’ deal they might strike. She did not want to play her hand too early. She did not want to fuck it up. 

And in her mind, she could start not fucking it up by finding out why her parents’ relationship had failed. 

Which meant tracking down her mother. 

Which meant she was now in a moldy Missouri motel room killing time until she could confront this woman and get this shit straightened out. 

So that she could, with a peaceful heart and a quiet(er) brain, tell Quinn _Yes, we can ‘get out together’ and I’ve got a plan for not fucking it up._

And that was all she meant when she said “I’m no good for you or anyone else...Don’t pressure me, okay.” She just needed a little more time. But if there was a worse way to say it, she didn’t know what it was.

Because now she sees what she couldn’t see two weeks ago, or yesterday, or this morning. That Quinn _must_ be in love with her, no matter how unlovable she is. There is no other explanation for it. He has never let her down. He has always made her feel safe. He abandoned his single-minded revenge quest to show up at her father’s memorial. He bounced her child on his knee, and helped her sister wash dishes. He’d kissed her, thoroughly, and tucked her hair behind her ear, and smiled at her with an expression that was so un-Quinnishly tender she feels ashamed. How could she not have seen that until now?

 _Oh, for fuck’s sake_ , Carrie thinks, _why did I use the word ‘pressure’?_

She starts to cry. She’s already started fucking it up, but she maybe she can fix it. 

Half-blinded by tears, she pushes the call button. 

Quinn picks up after the second ring. 

“Carrie.”

“Yes, Quinn. I’m sorry.”

He waits a beat, and when he speaks, his voice sounds strangled. “I see.”

“Wait—what? No, you don’t see—”

“It’s okay, Carrie. You don’t have to explain. And, uhm, I’m on the line with somebody. Can we talk later?”

“No, Quinn, now. I have to talk now. I am...I am SO sorry I told you not to pressure me. Those were the wrong words. Those were terrible words, and I wish I could take them back. You don’t make me feel pressured. You are not an intrusion or a burden. You make me feel safe, and happy, and like myself in the best way. You and my daughter make me feel human, and you make me want to be better. You make me feel like a fool for not recognizing how important you are to me until now. So my answer is ‘yes,’ Quinn. Yes, I want to get out together. Yes, I would love for you to fly out and join me. And you didn't ask me this, exactly, but, yes, I want _you_. When can you get here?” 

After this rush of words, there is silence.

Carrie can’t help it; she sobs audibly. “Are you still there?”

On Quinn’s end of the line there is silence for a few more seconds. His voice, when he speaks, sounds as thick with emotion as Carrie’s. “Jesus, Carrie. Hang on. I have to get off the line with this other call, but I’ll be right back to get your address.”

In the end, Carrie picks Quinn up at the Knoxville airport.

She has formulated a plan in the three hours between her phone call with Quinn and the visit to her mother. The center of the plan, the most perfect part of it, is inspired by a distracted tour of the channels on the motel television. 

She takes a run after she hangs up with Quinn, then showers, but she still has nearly an hour. She can’t read; their phone call has taken over every part of her cognitive brain, but she can perhaps watch a movie. She turns on the television, and flicks through channels. She stops at a close up of Whitney Houston’s face.

It is The Bodyguard. She and Maggie had watched it twenty times one summer when they were girls and it was in heavy rotation on cable. Thirteen-year-old Carrie had teased Maggie, who’d adored Kevin Costner, that the only actor worse than him in this stupid love movie was Whitney Houston, but Carrie had secretly loved the film as much as Maggie did. 

So she watches it now, while she is waiting to learn why her mother left her, and why Quinn never has, and after one of her favorite scenes, she picks up her phone, makes a couple of quick searches, and then calls Quinn again.

“Did you buy tickets yet?”

“Not yet, but there is a flight that gets into Springfie—”

“Okay, no don’t do that. Check flights into Knoxville for mid-afternoon.” 

“What? Is that nearer to you?”

“No, it’s not. It’s a nine hour drive, but I have a plan.”

Carrie can hear Quinn narrowing his eyes. “What is this plan?”

“I’m going to leave for Knoxville early-early tomorrow. I’ll pick you up at the airport in the afternoon, and then we’re going somewhere.”

“Somewhere where?”

“It’s a surprise,” Carrie said. 

“You’ve got a surprise for me in Knoxville?”

“Sort of. Near Knoxville.”

“I don’t know what to say to that.”

“Don’t say anything, Quinn. Just be ready.”

“I’m always ready, Carrie.”

Carrie smiles. “Oh, for Gods’s sake, Quinn. Put your pants back on.”

“I think Southwest lets you fly without them.”

She laughs out loud. “Call me back when you’ve booked your flight.”


	2. They’ll Take All Your Water, But They’re Worth It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carrie visits her mother, and this time, what she discovers makes a difference.

Two hours later, Carrie is at her mother’s house, sitting at her table. She is drinking tea, her back to the hydrangea blooms mounded just outside the kitchen windows. She’d almost left earlier in the visit, after she realized that Ellen had _not_ left her father because he was bipolar, but she changed her mind and sat back down. For the second time that day, her better angels, emboldened by their earlier success with Quinn, acted decisively.

_I’ve always thought that being bipolar meant that you couldn’t be with people. Not for the long haul, cause they’ll up and leave you soon enough._

_No._

_Well that’s what I’ve thought. All this time._

_It’s not true. Please believe that._

_I don’t even know if that’s possible anymore._

_[Long pause.] It’s possible._

Carrie starts crying, and Ellen moves quietly to hug her. And Carrie, to her own shock, lets her. She buries her head in her mother’s shoulder, and cries for a long time. She has so much, good and bad, to cry for, and it has all decided to surface right now. Ellen holds on to her younger daughter, and cries herself, and her tears are as bittersweet as her child’s.

When they both collect themselves, Carrie’s mother gently leads her back to the table and hands her a tissue. She takes several for herself and sits down. This time, she leans in toward her daughter and takes her hand.

“I love you, Carrie,” Ellen says. “And I love Maggie and your father. But I hated myself, and that was a constant assault on my love for my family. When I left, I was at the point where I didn’t believe any of you would _care_ if I was gone. It’s the same way I imagine suicidal people feel. So, I don’t know what’s going on in your life, but I’m going to give you advice. If you don’t already know, figure out how to accept yourself. Figure out how to _like_ yourself. And try to think of your connections to other people like the hydrangeas your father loved: they’ll take all your water, but they’re worth it. If you don’t do that, you’re going to fuck yourself for life.” 

Carrie starts at her mother’s language. She didn’t talk like that when Carrie was a kid; apparently she’d put _some_ effort into motherhood. Carrie starts to laugh a little. 

“I think I get my sailor’s mouth from you,” she says, smiling.

“Did you get my bad cooking?” 

“Yes,” Carrie says. _And your active libido_ , she thinks but doesn’t say; that’s more than a mother, even her mother, probably wants to hear. 

“My poor girl,” says Ellen, smiling, “you got the short end of my genetic stick.”

It was a joke, but Carrie’s face falls. She had certainly gotten the short end of her father’s genetic stick, and now, it appeared, her mother’s, too. It seemed like terrible luck that Maggie had gotten everything good and stable from her parents, and she had gotten everything else. 

Ellen understands instantly where her joke has gone wrong, and she casts around frantically for a change of topic. 

“Are you seeing anyone?” she asks, brightly, remembering only mid-sentence that Carrie had justsaid she believed her illness meant she could never have a long-term relationship. Ellen mentally kicks herself.

But to her surprise, Carrie’s face lights up and she smiles, and Ellen realizes that this is the first smile she has gotten from her daughter in years. She has only herself to blame, she knows, so this event, this small but genuine smile, feels like a benediction. Ellen seizes on it, relieved. 

“You are!” she says, delighted. “Who is this person? Tell me about him.”

Carrie doesn’t know how to start. She hasn’t had a conversation like this in years. Maybe ever. She feels like a character in a movie, not like Carrie Mathison. But she takes a deep breath and says, “His name is Peter Quinn, and I have known him for a couple of years. We work together. He came to Dad’s funeral, and when I walked him to his car, he kissed me.”

Ellen smiles broadly. “For the first time?” 

“Yes. And then he asked me to...um...” Carrie trails off; she doesn’t want to use Quinn’s words: _You want out, too. We get out together._ That might sound odd to people who did not do what she and Quinn did, and she did not want to invite that line of questioning from her mother. “I guess he asked me to be his girlfriend?” Carrie’s inflection rises at the end of her sentence, and she feels humiliated at the sound of her own voice. She believes she sounds like a fifteen year-old. A silly fifteen-year-old. 

“Just like that?” Ellen says, laughing. “Not, maybe, a date, first?”

“You’re right—a dinner invitation would have been nice. But that isn’t really Quinn. He’s an all-in kinda guy.”

“And do you want to be his girlfriend?”

“Yes,” Carrie says, once again surprising herself. “But I didn’t know that until he... brought it to my attention, so I almost blew it. I _really_ almost blew it. But I think I’ve course-corrected. I hope I have. I’ll know better tomorrow. He’s flying into Knoxville in the afternoon, so I’ll leave really early tomorrow morning and pick him up at the airport. I have a plan for the rest of our drive back to Maggie’s.”

“What’s he like, your Peter Quinn? Besides being an all-in guy? 

“Well, he doesn’t talk much. He’s intense. He’s loyal.”

“Is that your type?” 

“Quiet and loyal?” Carrie makes a scoffing noise. “I’d say no, that has not been my type. The men I have spent any extended time with—and there haven’t been many—have been glib, charming, and notably disloyal. Quinn is none of those things. But,” she hastens to add, “he’s not dull. There’s always something happening in his head, and he doesn’t miss anything. Ever. And he’s honest, even when maybe he shouldn’t be.” 

“What does he look like?” 

Carrie feels a little giddy—this was all so unreal. Her mother. Asking questions about her love life. Giving answers that involved fucking _Quinn_. “I have a picture from the other night, after Dad’s funeral.” Carrie digs in her bag and pulls out her phone. She flips through the photos and comes to one that she had asked Maggie to take. It is Lockhart, Saul, Carrie and Quinn, and she passes it to her mother. “He’s the one on the far right.”

Ellen raises an eyebrow. “Good.” she says. “He’s very handsome, Carrie. Look at that jawline.” 

“I know—he’s a good-looking man. But somehow I didn’t register that until recently.” 

“Not until he kissed you?”

“No...before that...maybe a couple of weeks ago when we were still overseas. We had a...disagreement that made me see him in a new light. He seemed like a different person for a while, and, I don’t know, I just saw him with new eyes. He was being such a prick that I saw his face like a stranger would see a face for the first time, and it was shockingly attractive.”

Ellen laughs. “I have a hard time believing you didn’t notice that bone structure for the first two years you knew him.”

Carrie grins, rolls her eyes, and nods. “Well, I shouldn’t say that, exactly. I have a very clear image of the first time I met him—the image is like a snapshot of his face walking toward me—and I remember thinking, _not bad._ But within seconds he said something arrogant—really obnoxious, honestly—and I shut it all down. Besides, I was in love with someone else at the time—Franny’s father. Or obsessed with him. I don’t know what to call it.”

Ellen just looks at Carrie, waiting for her to say more. 

“Whatever it was, I only had eyes for him for a long time. Not even Peter Quinn’s cheekbones could cut through that, I guess.”

“Well, I’m sorry that didn’t work out if it was something you wanted. Franny’s father, I mean. So, is he in Franny’s life at all?”

It makes sense that Ellen does not know anything about Brody, but Carrie can’t help but be shaken by the question. She makes an effort to be casual in her response; this is another line of questioning she wants to avoid. It is one thing to discuss the potentially good thing that was Quinn with this woman who had abandoned her; when you’re excited about something you’ll talk to almost any willing ear. It was another thing entirely to talk about the trauma of Brody. That would be trusting Ellen with too much, and she doesn’t deserve that kind of trust. Carrie has let go of the actively angry part of her grudge, at least for the moment, but that doesn’t mean she has restored Ellen to a role of confidante.

“No,” Carrie says, slowly. “He died a few months before Franny was born. He didn’t have parents or siblings, so there was never anyone from his side of the family for Franny to get to know.” Carrie gives a stiff, stilted smile, and Ellen realizes that she is done with this topic.

“Well,” says Ellen, standing. “Would you like to stay and join Tim and me for dinner? He’s always known that he has two older sisters, and that it’s my fault that he hasn’t met them. I told him who you were earlier today, and he’s kind of excited to meet you.”

Carrie doesn’t know what to say. She can’t imagine what it would be like to know that your mother had left other children behind. She thinks it would be frightening. So, yeah, no, she is not quite ready to spend time with a strange, new teenage brother. 

“I really need to get back,” Carrie says. “I’ve got some work to catch up on, and then I need to go to sleep early so I can leave around three or four in the morning. But I hope to meet him one day. I don’t think I’ll be leaving the country for a while, so maybe Franny and I will come back in a few months.”

“He’ll understand,” Ellen says. “He knew it was a long shot that you’d be able to stay.” Ellen reaches toward Carrie for a hug.

Carrie suddenly feels awkward again. She has had a nice time with Ellen, and it was fun to talk to her about Quinn. More importantly, in the space of a few simple sentences, Ellen had overturned Carrie’s entire worldview about what her own romantic possibilities were and unwittingly affirmed her decision to say yes to Quinn. The serendipity of this happening in a single day has softened Carrie’s heart toward Ellen, but it has not erased everything. There is still quite a bit for her to process. So Carrie hugs her mother, but a little stiffly, and breaks away first. 

“Thank you for talking to me today, and for being honest. This has been...good.” 

“I’m glad, Carrie. And thank you for coming to see me. After the way you talked to me in Maggie’s kitchen, I would have bet everything that you coming here, to talk to me, was never, ever, going to happen.”

Carrie nods. “I know—I would have bet the same way until the other night. I think, somehow, we have Quinn to thank. Or blame.” Carrie smiles and kisses her astonished mother lightly on the cheek, then turns and walks quickly to her Jeep. Her chin is quivering, but she holds herself together until her car is safely out of sight, and then she cries for the next half an hour.


	3. What the F**k, Carrie?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quinn waits.

Quinn feels like vomiting. He is standing in the curbside arrivals pick-up area of the Knoxville McGhee-Tyson Airport, a small bag at his feet, and his cell phone in his hand. He has been waiting for thirty-five minutes, and Carrie isn’t answering his calls.

They’d spoken the night before, when he gave her his flight information. She’d sounded relaxed and excited to see him. Now, though, she was nowhere to be found. He looks at his phone again. 

“What the fuck, Carrie?” He says it loudly to no one, but a woman standing a few feet behind him smiles to herself. She’d noticed Quinn on the leg of the flight from Atlanta, and then again while she was waiting at baggage claim. He’d walked by quickly, apparently having traveled with nothing but a carry-on. She was envious of anyone who could fly like that, but that was not, of course, why she noticed him. 

When the young woman from Atlanta finally gets her bag from the carousel and exits baggage claim, she is pleased to see her Atlanta-to-Knoxville crush standing at the curb, staring watchfully at approaching traffic. She positions herself behind him, and pretends to be engrossed in a paperback. She sees him look at his watch, look at his phone, make a call on his phone, and look back at his watch. She sees him do this at five minute intervals, and just after the fourth check, she ignores the arrival of the small bus that would have shuttled her to her car in a satellite parking lot, and continues watching Quinn. After the sixth “watch-to phone-to watch” round, after he “What the fuck?”s his very late ride, she considers approaching him. He’s gorgeous, he needs a ride, and she has a car.

Unaware that he is being watched, Quinn exhales heavily and continues staring up the road that brings taxis and shuttle buses and private vehicles to waiting passengers. 

And then a blue Jeep heading toward him changes lanes abruptly, nearly sideswiping a taxi trying to merge into traffic. Quinn can’t see the driver’s face yet—it’s too far—but he can see light-colored hair and an angry, female middle finger shoot out of the driver’s side window.

What kind of person changes lanes suddenly, without checking, without signaling, and gets angry at the driver she almost hits?

 _Carrie_ , he thinks, and the nauseated sludge in his gut morphs instantly into oversized butterflies that he will admit to no one, ever, for any reason. 

The car pulls up to the curb seconds later, and Quinn hears the doors unlock. He feels shy suddenly, and he doesn’t greet Carrie, or even look at her—he just tosses his bag into the back seat, then slips quickly into the front. He starts to pull the door closed, but he still has a foot on the ground, and he turns to look at Carrie directly. 

“Do you want me to drive?” he starts, but Carrie’s eyes—amused, shining with affection, and unmistakably lustful—make his final words trail off faintly.

“Not yet,” says Carrie, shaking her head slowly, a small smile playing at her mouth. “Soon, though. Once we get to our next stop, she’s all yours.” Carrie’s eyes search his face, settle on his mouth, then slide, slowly, back up to his eyes.

If someone had been bugging Carrie, her words would have sounded innocent. A little flirty, maybe, but nothing of the sex-soaked expression on her face would have registered as audio. 

It registers with Quinn, though, and the butterflies morph again, this time into an intense, core-melting desire that makes him worry his eyes have crossed involuntarily. He pulls his foot into the car and closes the door, never taking his eyes from hers. Ignoring the awkwardness of the sunken bucket seats, the gear shift lever, two empty coffee cups, the tangled mess of untethered phone chargers and USB cords, and her fastened seat belt, Quinn reaches for Carrie’s face, pulls her toward him, and kisses her with an urgency that leaves them both incapable of doing anything but stare at the other for nearly thirty seconds.

Quinn speaks first. “You need to drive away right now, Carrie, or I’m going to fuck you here in the passenger pick-up lane at the Knoxville airport.”

Carrie nods—she can’t even laugh, because she knows it is perilously close to the truth—and reaches shakily for the gear shift.

Less than ten feet away, standing at an angle that gives her a perfect view of the kiss, the young woman from Atlanta recognizes, with good-humored resignation, that her brand new crush wasn’t to be hers, at least not any time soon. ‘ _What the fuck, Carrie,’ indeed,_ she thinks, as the little Jeep, dark blue and surprisingly sensible, jerks into gear, and pulls away into traffic. She doesn’t know what their story is about, but she is pretty sure it’s better than the piece-of-shit legal thriller she is reading. She drops the book into her tote bag and sighs.


	4. Are We There Yet?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carrie & Quinn spend an hour in a car before reaching their surprise destination.

They ride in silence for a minute or two. Carrie is concentrating on getting out of the airport and picking up the route to her destination. Quinn is concentrating on getting the blood back to his brain. 

Carrie steals a glance at the console next to her and spies the phone charger cord with no phone attached. “Do you see my bag on the floor?” she says to Quinn, and he nods as he bends to pick it up. 

“Grab my phone, please.” She gives him the passcode, then makes a mental note to change it as soon as she gets a chance. Quinn will remember it, and she knows it. She might be feeling a little floaty and euphoric right now ( _is this really my life?!_ ) but things could change, and she hasn’t spent over ten years as an intelligence officer for nothing.

“Okay, open Apple Maps.”

“I see Google Maps—”

“No,” Carrie interrupts. “Apple Maps. You’ll find it.”

“Copy that,” Quinn says, dryly. “Apple Maps is open.”

“Do you see, like, a red icon at the bottom that says ‘Day 1-Quinn’?”

Quinn raises an eyebrow and looks at her out of the corner of his eye. He isn’t smiling, quite, but he looks pleased.

“I do. Should I click on it?”

“Yes.”

“It says it’s loading. Where are we going, Carrie?”

“It’s a surprise.” She gives him a quick smile.

“It’d better be a surprise with a bed.”

“You’ll have to wait and find out. By the way, are you always this horny and vocal about it?”

“Special circumstances. I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”

“Really? How long?”

 _Fuck_ , Quinn thinks. That isn’t a thing he wants to get into. He is rescued by the loaded screen on the maps app. 

“There’s a green GO button. Should I press it?” 

“Yes.”

“But you’re still not going to tell me where we’re going?”

“Nope,” Carrie says, looking smug.

A second later, a tinny voice comes out of her phone. “ _Starting route to 2700–_ ” The rest of the address is drowned out by Carrie shouting “NO NO NO NO NO NO LA LA LA LA LA LAAAA” at the top of her voice. She is almost inhumanly loud inside the car.

Quinn jumps, startled, and looks at her with monumental confusion. “What the FUCK, Carrie?” 

“Sorry about that,” Carrie says. She doesn’t look as chagrined as she should. “I just didn’t want you to hear the address.” She has almost ruined the surprise by not rehearsing that step in advance, but she is pretty sure Quinn has not heard the street name, which might have given it away. Or maybe not. She suspects Quinn’s knowledge of pop culture is even worse than her own. 

And then Quinn starts laughing. Actual laughter, sustained, and from his gut. Carrie has never heard Quinn laugh before, not like this, but it starts with something close to a giggle, and it makes her laugh, too. And then they can’t stop. Quinn laughs so hard he starts to wheeze and shake silently. Carrie realizes she can barely keep her eyes open, and she pants for him to stop because she is driving and needs to see. 

When their laughter finally dies down, they both wipe away tears, but Quinn’s are only partly of mirth. He will never articulate it exactly, but he has been struck by the pure and unfamiliar joy of being a part of something regular and everyday and ridiculous. With another person. _With Carrie_. 

“Should I turn your ringer back on?” Quinn asks, a few minutes later. 

“What?”

“Your ringer. On your phone. It was off. I called you a few times while I was waiting at the airport.”

“Oh, shit, really?” 

“Yep. I thought maybe you’d changed your mind.” Quinn speaks lightly, but Carrie suspects he means it, and she scribbles something onto a mental notepad titled “Ways This Might Go South”: _1\. Passive-aggressive insecurity?_

“I wouldn’t do that,” she says, and she sounds a little offended. “Even if I did change my mind, I wouldn’t leave you at an airport.”

“It was a joke. I didn’t really think you’d leave me at the airport.”

“But you thought I’d change my mind about you?”

“About us, maybe.” 

“What made you think that?”

Quinn’s mouth opens and closes. Once again, he’s started a conversation he doesn’t want to have.

“Nothing. Forget it. I don’t know why I said it,” he says. _Except that you’ve never given me any real hint before yesterday that you saw me as anything other than a colleague._

“I’m not changing my mind, Quinn. Neither of us knows what this is going to be, but I’m in it. If it fails, we’ll know. You’ll know. It won’t be a surprise. And I won’t just not show up. I might turn into a dick. We might _both_ turn into dicks—in fact, I think that’s pretty likely—but neither of us just gives up.”

Quinn stares at Carrie’s profile. He loves her nose; it is strong, and a little overpowering. Like her.

He reaches for her right hand and holds it, resting it down on the seat beside her. She looks at him and smiles. He smiles back.

“Are we there yet?” he asks.

About forty minutes into the trip, after they gossip about people and events from the evening of her father’s funeral, and Carrie gives Quinn the basics of her visit with her mother, she notices the name of their destination on a highway sign. She doesn’t think Quinn notices it, because he’s been preoccupied with the views, which are becoming more scenic by the minute. But she knows he’s curious about the destination, so he’s probably taking notes covertly. She waits a few minutes, then says, “I need you to close your eyes for the rest of the trip. It won’t be long. Maybe fifteen minutes.” 

“Really? It’s pretty here.” he says.

Carrie’s eyes widen, but she stares straight ahead. She’s never heard Quinn use the word ‘pretty.’ It’s like being in an alternate universe, but she loves it. This is what she wanted for him as she watched him shoot a colleague and calmly walk out of Astrid’s garage. She wants him to have a better life. She wants him to be happy. 

“I swear, this will be the last mystery destination. At least on this trip.” 

“Yeah, I hope so. This is weird. But I trust you, and I’m going to put my seat back and maybe take a nap. I need to rest up, anyway. I’ve got some work to do later.” Quinn’s tone is deadpan.

“Well, that’s true,” Carrie says, equally deadpan. “I am a lot to keep up with.”

“Oh, I’ve heard.”

Carrie inhales in (mostly) mock indignation. “Wow. Quinn. That’s low.”

Quinn has reclined his seat back as far back as it will go, and his eyes are closed. “I’m sorry,” he says, “what did you say? I must have dozed off.” 

Carrie huffs and looks down at Quinn’s face. The faintest hint of a smile plays on his lips. 

It makes her want to laugh, but she won’t give him the satisfaction. _I can’t believe this motherfucker with the cheekbones is making jokes about listening to me screw Brody. And that was a good one, too. This guy better be fantastic tonight, or I’m going to have to fake like my life depends on it._

 _And it might,_ she realizes, glancing down at him again and feeling her heart shift and thump. _He’s been in my car for less than an hour, and I cannot imagine being without him again._ _Ever._

Quinn actually does fall asleep for a few minutes, and he wakes when the car slows to a stop and Carrie rolls down her window. 

“Cabin guest parking?” she asks, and someone outside responds.

Quinn’s eyes open, and he snaps his seat back to the upright position. Carrie’s going to have to restrain him physically if she wants to extend the surprise any longer. He looks around at a giant parking lot full of SUVs, buses, trucks, and RVs. People—families with children, a couple of small groups of adults, and a cluster of maybe ten summer campers with matching t-shirts—are heading toward an entrance gate with a giant sign.

Dollywood, it reads, in big swirly letters. The “w” is a butterfly.

He has no idea what is happening.

“What? What is this?” he says faintly. He turns to Carrie, who is trying to navigate the parking lot and look at him at the same time. Her smile is huge, and her eyes are as bright and as greeny-blue as he’s ever seen them. She’s nodding and waving her right hand at herself in an “I am awesome, right?” kind of way. 

“Quinn,” she says, “we are about to have so much fun.”


	5. God Invented Cussing for Nothing

An hour later, Carrie, Quinn, and sixteen other people hang upside down from a stalled roller coaster car.

“I wonder how much longer this is gonna take,” Quinn says, craning his neck to the left to watch the chaos one hundred feet below. Two ambulances and at least twenty park and emergency workers are moving in ways that looked frazzled even from his distance. He sees the front end of a fire truck pull up. “I am hella hungry.”

He turns back to look at Carrie, but her head is turned in the other direction. He can see a portion of the left side of her face, and it looks...crimson. “Look at me,” he says, softly, and Carrie turns, grudgingly, like a truculent teenager. “Your face is really red -- are you okay?”

“NO I AM NOT!” Carrie shouts. 

Someone, maybe a kid, starts crying behind them. 

Quinn raises an eyebrow, but chooses not to press the issue of her red face; it’s not like they can do anything about it.

Carrie, to her credit, realizes right away that her outburst was unnecessary and alarming. “Shit,” she says in a loud apology to everyone hanging from the apex of the Tennessee Tornado loop, “I’m sorry. That was not helpful, I know. We’re all going to be fine. I’m just--”

“You don’t need to apologize,” a man says. “This is bullshit.”

“Is all this cussing necessary?” someone else says primly. 

“Lady, if this is not the time for cussing,” says Bullshit, “then God invented cussing for nothing.”

Lady huffs loudly. 

Carrie squeezes Quinn’s hand. “I wasn’t yelling at you,” she says. “My head hurts, and I’m scared, and I have to pee. What the fuck are they doing down there?”

“It looks like they called in a fire truck, I guess for the ladder or something, but I can only see part of it. I don’t think it can get close enough--too many trees.” He bends his neck back again and tries to look behind them, then leans into her hanging hair. “They’re going to have to climb up and harness us, and lower us down one by one,” he whispers.

“How do you know?” Carrie whispers back. 

“That’s what I’d do,” he says.

Carrie’s not sure if it’s competence or cockiness that makes him think he knows how to rescue people from roller coasters, but she gives him the benefit of the doubt. Quinn knows a lot of stuff. 

“Quinn, I think I have crackers in my bag. Do you want them?”

“What are you, eighty? Since when do you carry snacks?”

“I’ve been driving for 25 of the last 48 hours. I’m carrying a lot more shit than normal. You said you were hungry. Do you want my crackers?”

“What else do you have?”

“To eat? Nothing, Quinn. This is not Bob’s Big Boy. It’s my purse, and it happens to have a few peanut butter crackers. By chance. Do you want the damn crackers or not?”

“Uh, yes, thank you,” he says. He sounds chastised. 

Retrieving the crackers is harder than expected. Her bag has been strapped cross-body as always, and is lodged between her back and the seat. When she maneuvers her left hand to tug it free, it starts to fall, and even though the strap is secure under her arm and will only drop so far, she lunges instinctively to catch it. Her sudden motion makes the restraining bar crack loudly, and shakes the cars behind them. Several people gasp, and someone screams. Quinn grabs at his shoulder harness with his left hand, and Carrie’s belt with his right. 

“Jesus Christ, Carrie!” 

“I’m sorry,” Carrie says loudly, again, trying to look as far back over her shoulder as she can. “Sorry, sorry, sorry - I wasn’t thinking. I think we’re okay here. Is everyone else okay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” says Bullshit. “We’re fine back here.”

“Speak for yourself,” says another, younger man. “I’m not goddamn fine.” His voice sounds tight and strained. “I don’t think I can stay up here much longer.”

“Really?” says someone else, also a younger male, perhaps a teenager. “Because this is awesome. I might bring my girlfriend next week and dangle up here all afternoon”

“Prick,” says the first guy.

“Shut the fuck up, you whiny douche,” says the teenager. 

“Shut the fu---when we get down, I’m going to beat the shit out of you, you little cocksucker.”

Someone whistles and laughs, others murmur under their breath, and Lady starts in again about the cussing. The two younger males continue beefing, and Bullshit tries to shut them down and gets called ‘old man’ for his trouble. 

Quins inhales deeply. He is hungry, and like everyone else, scared and very uncomfortable. He is also deeply irritated. 

“HEY!” he shouts loudly to get everyone’s attention, then turns his head as far to the left as he can. The sixteen people in the cars behind him can only see his profile, but it is nearly as forbidding as the straight-on view. 

“Everybody. Stop. Talking.” he says, slowly. “This is not the time.” Quinn’s voice is loud enough to be heard at the back, but it is not loud. His tone, however, projects as clearly as though he were on a bullhorn, and even though everyone _knows_ he is as incapable of getting out of his seat as they are, it seems like a good idea not to test him. 

The fussing ceases. 

After twenty or thirty seconds of silence, Quinn turns his head back toward Carrie. 

“Can I still get those crackers?” 

Over an hour later, Carrie, and then Quinn, are the last two riders harnessed and lowered to the ground. Each pair of riders has been checked by a paramedic, then assigned to a nervous and apologetic park employee and shuttled away to be handled elsewhere.

The paramedic tells Carrie her blood pressure is mildly elevated, but given the circumstances, it is within normal parameters. The paramedic clears her, but notes the little red dots all over her face. She looks red and a little swollen, and eyes are bloodshot. “It’s petechiae,” he says, “tiny burst blood vessels from the pressure of hanging upside down for so long. They clear up on their own.” 

“Yeah, I know,” she says. “I’ve gotten them before.” She doesn’t say, of course, that it was from drunken vomiting. “Are they bad?”

The paramedic nods. “I’ve seen better. Just rest and drink lots of water. Avoid alcohol for a few days.” 

Carrie sighs inwardly. She has a small stash of wine in the trunk of her car, but it will hold. She’s gotten a little off-schedule with her meds because of all the traveling, so it is better she stays sober, anyway. 

When Quinn touches down and his harness is removed, he politely thanks the fire and rescue personnel in earshot, and then looks over at Carrie, who is watching him intently. She looked ready to jump out of her skin. 

He covers the distance between them, and hugs her tightly. She hugs him equally tightly, pressing her face into his chest. She bursts into tears.

“Quinn, this is all my fault. My stupid little surprise _sucked_. We could have died.” 

“But we didn’t, and now we have a story. Now that we’re down, I’m kind of looking forward to telling it.”

Carrie cranes her neck back from his chest to look up at his face.

“To who? I’ve never seen you tell a story of any kind, to anyone.” 

He looks down at her, his eyes smiling. “You don’t know everything about me, Mathison. My storytelling skills are highly sought after in some circles.” He kisses her lightly on the nose, then releases her and turns to the paramedic who is waiting to check him out. 

The paramedic checks Quinn’s pulse, and raises an eyebrow. He takes it a second time. He doesn’t say anything, though, until he takes Quinn’s blood pressure twice.

“You seem oddly relaxed given the circumstances. Are you, like, an athlete?” 

“No,” Quinn says. He doesn’t elaborate, but it isn’t awkward, and he shakes the paramedic’s hand. “Take care of yourself, and, again, thanks to all of you for getting us down safely. That was impressive work.”

“That’s our job, sir, but we appreciate your thanks.” The paramedic waves over a waiting park employee holding two bottles of water, then turns to Carrie. “Make sure you stay right side up for a while. That pressure wasn’t good for you. Avoid any more excitement today if you can. And if you start having vision problems, or headaches, call 911.” 

Carrie looks annoyed. “Thanks,” she says, a little petulantly. “I’m fine.

She does look a bit worse for wear, but Quinn knows better than to throw his hat in that ring. Instead, he turns his attention to the park employee and smiles at her, and shortly, both he and Carrie are seated in the back of a golf cart, and heading toward the front office.

***

As Quinn pilots the little blue Jeep up the climbs and curves of this corner of Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains, Carrie follows their route on her phone.

“Right there,” she says, finally, pointing just ahead to her right. It is a cabin, in a little cul-de-sac of cabins, and it sits high off the road, without enough tree cover or isolation for Carrie’s liking. Her heart sinks; this is the comped upgrade (and additional night) the park manager has insisted they accept, but the cabin Carrie originally booked was smaller, and cozier-looking, and nestled in a stand of trees. _Fuck it,_ she thinks, feeling uncharacteristically resigned. The Fates have clearly dropped a few threads in this section of her tapestry, and she doesn't feel up to railing against it. 

“Is this all for us?” Quinn asks, shading his eyes and squinting up at the building. “It’s big. Let’s go see what it looks like--I’ll come back for the bags in a minute.” 

“You go ahead,” Carrie says, handing him the key. “I have to call my sister and tell her I’m staying an extra night.” She watches Quinn trot up the steps to a large porch that wraps around to the front of the house, then dials her sister’s number. 

“So, I’ve got great news, good news, not-as-good-news, and you’re-not-gonna-believe-it-news,” Carrie says when Maggie answers. “Which do you want first?”


	6. Whiplash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quinn explores the cabin and his own thoughts while Carrie talks to her sister.  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gets a little spicy. Just letting you know.

_Okay, wow—I didn't expect this. Is this kitschy? Cheesy? What do they call this? Definitely comfortable. This view—fuck,that’s beautiful. Look at this big-ass television...porn would be awesome on that thing._

_What am I doing? I really don’t belong here. Why did she have this sudden about-face? And why did I offer to fly out? How fucking desperate did I sound...Jesus. Did she just feel sorry for me? Shit, this is gonna take a left turn any minute, I know it. We can’t be together. Why did I think this could work? How could she possibly have feelings for me?_

_I mean, I shot her. I don’t know why she even talks to me anymore. Though, to be fair, she did bring it on herself. It made a little more sense once I knew she was pregnant...and it nearly fucking killed me...but still...it’s one thing to disregard orders from me or Saul. Dar, on the other hand, wakes up every day to fuck with Carrie. Ordering me to shoot her was the highlight of his year._

_Ahh, there’s the bathroom... Really, why did I offer to fly out? Why did she change her mind like that? Maybe the kiss was that good. I mean, yeah, it was good, but—THAT’S A PINK HEART-SHAPED TUB—what?—I kill people for a living—why am I at Dollywood? In a fancy cabin with a pink, heart-shaped tub? At least this toilet is normal._

_And, by the way, Carrie, who I’d say this out loud to right now except you’re outside on the phone, I am glad you didn’t continue to lie for long about Brody being Franny’s father, because that baby looks EXACTLY like him. Like, I’m no longer convinced he actually died in Tehran. I wouldn’t put it past that sneaky fucker to shrink himself and masquerade as a fetus for a few months._

_Fucking Brody. A Chuckie doll with a buzz cut and a suicide vest. What did she see in him? Seriously? I’m no prize, but Brody was a) a terrorist b) married c) a dick. He was charming, if you like that sort of thing, which I don’t. And I would’ve bet big money that he was a terrible lay. Max said he saw him screwing his wife once while he and Virgil and Carrie were watching him, and it was_ _boring_ _. When Max is bored watching a man have sex with Jessica Brody, there’s something wrong. On the other hand, I know what I heard with him and Carrie in that motel room. That was...yeah...I wish...yeah...no..._

_I really wish I hadn’t heard them fucking._

_Maybe Carrie thinks I’m safe. Compared to him, at least. I hope not. I hope so? Or does she have a thing for killers?_

_What if our chemistry isn’t right? It feels right to me. It felt right when we kissed outside Maggie’s. It felt off-the-charts this afternoon at the airport. But why did she suddenly start having feelings? Who does that? That’s never happened to me—it’s immediate or it’s never._

_That bed is huge, look at that. I’m exhausted. I’m just going to stretch out for a minute._

_Carrie can’t really be into me, can she? Why would she? I’m skinny, and I can’t make small talk, and my soul is stained. My haircut sucks. My face scares people. I don’t know the names of films or actors or musicians. I’m not sure I really know who Dolly Parton is. Does Carrie even like country music—I thought it was just jazz?_

_I really wish I hadn’t heard them fucking._

_Okay, I need to pull myself together. I’m pretty sure I’m okay in bed, but what if I’m wrong? What if I’m the guy who runs around saying ‘Well, I’ve never gotten any complaints,’ but doesn’t realize it’s because he’s so bad there’s no point in complaining? Boy, is this bed comfortable…_

_Carrie really likes a cabin, doesn’t she? She seems to have a lot of sex in cabins. Shit shit shit. Did she just transfer her Brody feelings to me because she’s lonely, and now she wants to recreate their cabin weekends? That is fucking gross. It’s either that—I’m just a substitute for that twitchy ginger freak—or both Brody and I are variables in some weird sexual/romantic equation she has: Killer + Cabin = Panty-Dropper. That’s a hell of a pattern._

_Astrid would have told me if I was bad at sex. Right? I mean, she kept coming back. I miss her. I wish I felt about her the way I feel about Carrie, because Astrid’s a good one. A really good one._

_Okay, this whole cabin sex thing is a problem. I gotta do something different. The beach. Miami Beach. A modern hi-rise hotel. Somewhere that she can’t compare to Brody. I can’t have sex with her here. Maybe I can blame it on the roller coaster._

_Christ, I wish I hadn't heard them fucking._

_But that might hurt her feelings and make her think I don’t like her surprise. Because I do—I love it—I just...I can’t have sex with her here._

_This bed, though… After this nap, I’ll figure out how to tell her._

Quinn is awakened some time later—he doesn’t know how long—by the brush of Carrie’s lips along his jawline. She is standing by the side of the bed, bent over him, her hands pressed into the mattress on either side of his shoulders.

Her hair tickles his face, and she moves her mouth from his jawbone to his neck, below his ear. He feels her tongue trace a delicate circle on his skin, and he shudders. Before he thinks about it, he puts one arm around her shoulder and another on her hip, and flips her onto the bed. The sun is starting to set, but there is enough light in the room to see the look on her face, and it makes him hard instantly.

He puts his mouth on hers and probes deeply, rhythmically; Carrie’s tongue melds with his, and they kiss like that for an aeon. He has no idea how long it goes on, and he doesn’t want it to stop, but there are so many other parts of her that he wants in his mouth that he knows he will have to stop eventually. Carrie’s right hand is fumbling with his belt, and her left hand is buried in the hair at the back of his head, pulling him as close to her as she can.

Without breaking the kiss, Quinn puts his weight on one elbow and reaches his other hand under Carrie’s t-shirt. He is relieved to find a front closure on her bra, and he snaps it open, freeing her breasts. He palms one, gently, then takes her nipple between his forefinger and thumb and applies an artful, masterful, perfectly gauged pinch that makes Carrie moan into his open mouth, and press her hips up toward his body. She manages to push Quinn’s pants below his hips, and she takes his cock in her hand, pressing it up against his belly and tracing firmly around the head. For a moment, Quinn feels like he might lose consciousness.

He at last relinquishes Carrie’s mouth, and the two of them take deep, shuddering breaths. He raises Carrie’s arms above her head and swiftly tosses away her t-shirt and bra. Both of them strip off their pants—they are almost frantic—and Quinn rolls onto Carrie, pinning her left hand to the bed, and holding her right hand against his chest.

He teases her palm gently with his thumb as he slides into her, making a deeply guttural noise, and then he waits, motionless, until he is ready to move again.

Carrie throws her free leg over his back and rocks up toward him, burying him deeper inside her, and squeezing him in slow, undulating waves. There is barely any visible movement between the two of them, but they are both gasping.

Suddenly, Carrie takes her hand from Quinn’s and pulls his mouth to hers, kissing him, deeply.

“Fuck me,” she murmurs, but it is a waste of breath, because Quinn has already embarked on an intense, bone-shaking rhythm that becomes, very shortly, the only thing in the world worth doing. Carrie slides her finger down between his body and hers, and rubs herself with a practiced hand. She doesn’t need much; they are moving at a rhythm that will not allow her to focus on anything but Quinn’s cock, his mouth, his hands, her pussy, and the pure animal pleasure of fucking. She is panting and gasping, and pulling at Quinn’s hair and back and ass, and when she comes, bucking violently against his pelvis, her moans come from a place that has never been opened before, a place of nerve-endings and emotion, of intense chemistry and total trust, of unbridled sexuality and pure, generous love.

She has never heard herself like this. 

He has never heard anyone like this.

She pulls Quinn’s mouth to hers again, and kisses him. She is shaking. Quinn knows that he can come anytime he wants to, but he doesn’t want to. He wants to stay inside Carrie; he wants to touch every part of her, and feel the slide and warmth of her. He wants to make her moan and whimper and pull at his hair. This is the way he can love her. This is the way he can cleanse his stained soul. His rhythm speeds up, and his breath is ragged.

"Come, baby,” whispers Carrie, tensing around him, “come. This is so fucking good.”

And Quinn comes, hard, and knows that he will never experience anything better, ever.

 _Maybe I am glad I heard them fucking,_ is the last thing he thinks, as he slips into the glowy, orangey-red sleep of orgasm and love.


	7. It Was Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carrie and Quinn stay up way later then they should.

When Quinn wakes up, no more than ten or fifteen minutes have passed, and he and Carrie are still tangled together in the warm darkness of the cabin’s master bedroom. He can make out her head on his chest only because of the light color of her hair. He is sure she can’t see his face, but she knows, somehow, that he is awake. 

“You weren’t kidding about needing a bed,” Carrie says, her voice languorous. “We’ve been here, what, forty minutes, and you’ve already had two naps and your way with me. You’ve used this bed to its fullest capacity.”

 _Shit_ , he thinks. _I really can’t talk right now. We’re going to ruin this if we talk. I’ll say something weird and emotional. Please don’t make me talk. Maybe I can pretend I’m still asleep._

“If you think that was everything that’s gonna happen in this bed, Carrie, you’re wrong.”

“Really?” says Carrie, “What else do you have planned?” 

_Goddamn it with this talking. I’ve got way too much to deal with right now. I just had the best first (any?) sex of my life and I LOVE her, and I can’t believe this is happening. If I talk I’m going to scare her. I just want to be quiet. And, wait did she just call what we did ‘having my way with her’? I think she had a lot of her way with_ _me_ _. I started out asleep, for God’s sake._

“Oh, I haven’t planned anything. This is going to be pure improv. And do you know what the first rule of improv is?”

“No…?” 

_Okay, I can do this. There’s nothing emotional about improv._

“The first rule of improv is to always say ‘ _yes_ ’. ‘ _Yes, and...’_ ”

“What do you know about improv?” 

_Good good good good. This is safe._

“I’ve spent a lot of time sitting around and waiting for stuff to happen. I read. If I’m with a team, we talk.”

“Do you mean to tell me there’s a SAD/SOG operative with a background in improv comedy?”

_Much better._

“You know I can’t answer that.”

Carrie slides up Quinn’s body and finds his face. She dances soft, sweet kisses on his mouth, his cheeks, his brow, and brushes her nipples across his chest. “Can you answer this?” she murmurs.

_Thanks for the softball, Carrie. Bless you and your horny little heart._

“Yes,” he says, sitting up swiftly, “and I hope our neighbors aren’t close enough to hear it.”

Much, much later, they are still in bed and the cabin is still dark. Carrie fumbles at the bedside table until she finds a lamp and its switch, and turns on the light. 

“Huh,” Carrie says, squinting at him. “You look..invigorated. I thought you’d look more spent.”

Quinn squints back at her. Her face is smeared with mascara and lipstick, her eyes are bloodshot, and the surrounding skin is bright red from the petechiae. Her hair looks like it was caught in a fan. 

“Huh,” he says, quietly, “you look even more beautiful than I remembered.” 

There is no sarcasm in his voice, and no teasing. It is crystal-clear with wonder and sincerity and love, and for a split-second, he looks as vulnerable as a child.

Carrie bursts into tears at the sweetness in his face, and pulls a pillow over her head in embarrassment. Her emotions are always near the surface, but she rarely cries because she is _happy_. In fact, the only time she can remember doing it—almost—is when she spotted Quinn standing awkwardly, beautifully, outside the church following her father’s memorial. 

_What the fuck is happening to me?_ she thinks. _I don’t want Quinn to think he upset me, but I also don’t want him to know he’s dismantled me with his...stupid, sincere voice...and his...stupid, lovey-dovey eyes. I’m in big trouble here._ She wedges her body as far under his as she can, and she cries even harder when he wraps an arm around her. 

She is so glad she hasn’t fucked this up. 

Carrie’s tears are a balm to Quinn’s terrified soul. He has been so intensely in love with her for so long that he is afraid to let his feelings out. What if they’ve gotten vicious during their captivity? What if they are so starved they kill and eat everything in their path? He is afraid of overwhelming her, or even worse, of frightening her. He knows there’s a possibility she might see the intensity of his emotions as creepy or weird, and it rocks him with shame. 

His only hope is to maintain a facade of just enough coolness, just enough of a blue wash, to disguise the red-hot, molten bubbling of his heart until he’s sure she feels the same way. Or close to the same way—he’s never met anyone who felt quite as strongly about things as he does, and he certainly can’t imagine Carrie feeling for him what he feels for her. He’s allowing himself to hope for it right now, just a little bit, but he doesn’t truly expect it.

But seeing the melting softness in Carrie’s eyes when he told her she was beautiful moved him several feet toward the “Carrie Might Actually Fall In Love With Me” end of the scale. The burst of clearly joyful tears pushed him a few feet closer. And feeling her trying to burrow into his body to hide from her own adorable embarrassment? He couldn’t put into words how much that meant to him. 

Carrie doesn’t cry for very long, and when she finishes she backs her face out of Quinn’s warm chest and turns it up toward cooler air. 

“Can we pretend that didn’t happen?” she asks.

“That? Sure.” Quinn says. “But I’ve already mapped out several blog posts about the rest of it. I might need to restage a few things for pictures.”

Carrie laughs and buries her head back in his chest for a minute. She can hear his heart thumping away, and she knows, she _knows_ , that he is at least as crazy about her as she is about him, but she’s still in disbelief. _When did he get funny? Can this really be my life? Don’t. Fuck. It. Up. Carrie._

She shifts under him and kisses his collar bone. “Let me up, please,” she says, “I gotta go to the bathroom.” For the first time in hours, Carrie removes herself from physical contact with Quinn. She climbs over the sex-tangled sheets and pillows that have been forced to the edges of the giant king-size bed, and swings her legs to the floor. She’s dizzy for a moment, but she recovers without Quinn noticing, and strolls to the bathroom. She flicks on the light, and is instantly sorry. 

Carrie stares at herself for a few long seconds.

“QUINN!!!!!” she shouts.

“Everything okay?” he asks, mildly, but she can tell he’s laughing. 

She wants to kill him.

“I look...horrific. What’s wrong with you? Why did you tell me I was beautiful?”

“You are to me.”

“Oh, stop. You should have more self-respect, Quinn. I can’t believe you...did everything you did to me while I looked like this.”

“It was dark.”

Carrie slams the bathroom door. _Fucker_ , she thinks. 

Fifteen minutes later, Carrie has showered and washed her hair. She can’t do anything about the hideous red dots that cover her cheeks and nose and eyelids, but the smeared make-up is gone, and she smells clean. Maybe after she sleeps the petechiae will fade a little. 

When she emerges from the bathroom in a Dollywood-branded robe, Quinn is not there, but she sees that he has straightened the bedding, and moved the rest of their bags into the room. She can hear a shower running in another part of the cabin, and she follows the sound to the second bedroom. She briefly considers being annoyed that he didn’t at least _try_ to join her in her shower—it seems like the sexier, first-night-together choice. An earlier incarnation of Carrie would have pouted, for sure. But she is brand-new, Don’t-Fuck-It-Up-Carrie, and she realizes that she prefers that he’s taking his own shower. Frankly, she needed time to regain her dignity after seeing how bad she looked.

So, Carrie leaves Quinn to his solo scrub, and trots into the kitchen. There is a clock on the stove, and she sees that it’s 1:17 am. She figures she found Quinn asleep in the master bedroom a little after 7 pm, which means they’ve been sexing it up for roughly six hours. A short but deliciously filthy flashback makes her take a deep breath and put a hand on the counter to steady herself. She’s gone from zero to one hundred on the Sexual Arousal Speedway in less than two seconds. 

_I am in trouble_ , she thinks again. _I cannot jump on him right away. I have got to pull myself together and play it cool. He’s going to think I’m off my meds again. AM I off my meds? When was the last time I took them? Christ, what about my birth control pills? Did I take them yesterday? Shit. And I’ve got condoms in my bag--why didn’t I get them? How can I be so irresponsible?_

She opens the refrigerator door, sticks her face into the cool interior, and tries to think about not-sexy things. She’s run through a list that includes Saul, lawn care, Franny’s pediatrician’s office, and the HR Department at the Agency, when she hears Quinn exit his shower. Sufficiently turned down, if not completely off, she straightens up and pulls out the food platters that the park management had provided as part of their “Sorry our Roller Coaster Nearly Killed You” comp package. 

A few minutes later, as she’s searching for plates and utensils, Quinn finds her in the kitchen. He’s wearing a t-shirt and boxer briefs. She assumes they’re clean, but she never actually saw the pair she pried off him earlier, so she’s not sure. _I bet I could tell if I sniffed them_ , she thinks, and is immediately disgusted. _You just want to get your face in his...vicinity_. 

“I’m a little hungry,” is all she says. “You? Sit down.” 

Quinn complies, takes a fork, and spears a chunk of cold pulled pork. He takes baked beans, and potato salad, and a piece of cornbread, and starts to eat with zeal. Carrie sits across from him and takes everything but the pork. She’s got a little less food on her plate, but it’s just as cold as Quinn’s, and she attacks it just as voraciously. She has had the most exhilarating day of her life, and she is hungry.

After Quinn cleans every crumb from his plate, and takes a long drink of water, he leans back in his chair and watches Carrie finish her food. 

“So, I have a secret,” he says.

Carrie is chewing, but she raises what she hopes are “do tell” eyebrows at him.

“Today was my first time on a roller coaster.”

“What?” she says around a mouthful of cornbread. She can’t help it. 

“Yeah. First time. Probably last time.”

Carrie’s eyes scream all the bewildered disbelief that is crowded out of her mouth by baked beans and cornbread.

“I was in foster care for most of my childhood. None of my families were the type to take me to amusement parks.”

Carrie swallows. “You never went with friends? A girlfriend?” 

“No,” is all he says, but it sounds a lot like, “ _No, because I didn’t have friends. Or girlfriends_.”

“Well, okay. I didn’t know that. About the foster care, I mean. I’m sorry.” 

“No need to be sorry. That was what I knew. It wasn’t like I lost something I remembered.”

“Do you know how you ended up in foster care?”

“No. No one volunteered the information and I never asked. Then Dar Adal found me when I was about sixteen, and... _voila_. Now I’m here.”

Carrie manages to turn her head far enough to the side that she doesn't spit water all over the food. 

“What do you mean Dar Adal _found_ you?”

“I mean one of his guys found me. I was mostly living on the streets by that point, and he had people trolling cities looking for kids like me that might be useful in specific roles.”

“At SIXTEEN??” Carrie’s face would be red even without the petechiae. 

“I wasn’t a typical sixteen year old, Carrie.”

“That’s bullshit, Quinn. You were sixteen years old, and that creepy fucking Dar Adal is...what the HELL? What kind of ‘specific role’ would he use a teenage boy for?”

“You know I can’t answer that, Carrie.”

“Yeah, well, never mind, because I can guess. Jesus Christ, Quinn.”

“It’s probably not what you think,” Quinn says, unconvincingly.

“Oh, give me some credit. What else is he going to use a sixteen year old for? Was he infiltrating some terrorist paperboy route? I better not catch him in a dark alley, Quinn, because I will fuck that old man up.” 

Carrie has never liked Dar Adal. She’s been particularly mistrustful of him recently for being in the back of Haissam Haqqani’s truck for reasons that remain unclear to her. But this news puts him on a whole new level. He just landed on the top of her “Dark Alley/On Sight” list. There aren’t a lot of people there, and most of them are also on international watch lists, but just the thought of him right now makes her blood boil and her head hurt. 

Quinn is looking at her with awe, and a little bit of concern. The last time he’s seen her this exercised was when she was trying to drone-strike Haqqani, never mind that Saul was standing right next to him. Her blood-shot eyes are almost glowing. 

“Thank you, Carrie,” Quinn says simply. He knows there’s not much point in telling her to calm down. “This is all water under my bridge, and I’m fine. But if you do get hold of him, let me know. I want to watch.” He pulls a wry smile and leans over the table to take her hand. 

Carrie huffs, but rubs her thumb gently over his knuckles. “I’ll text you,” she says. “But I won’t miss a good opportunity waiting.”

“That’s all I can ask,” Quinn says, and he’s rewarded by seeing Carrie smile back; her Dar Adal rage appears to be dissipating. 

Quinn stands up, still holding Carrie’s hand. “Let’s put this stuff away and go to bed. To sleep,” he adds for clarity. 

“You’re finally going to stop pawing at me?” Carrie says, tickling his knuckles again. 

“Uh, yeah, sure, whatever, you little cock-hound,” Quinn says, pulling her around the end of the table and kissing her sweetly.


	8. From There to Here

When Carrie wakes up the next morning, she is lying in the same position she fell asleep in: on her stomach, head turned to the inside of the bed, one hand tucked under her chin. Light-blocking curtains are drawn across the east facing windows, but enough sunlight sneaks in around the edges for her to see Quinn clearly. 

He is her mirror: on his stomach, head turned to the center of the bed, facing her. He has kicked the too-warm coverlet away, but the sheet is pulled up near his ears. He is also, to her great delight, at least a foot and a half away from her. 

Before they’d gone to sleep the night before, Quinn had disappeared into the second bathroom and returned ten or fifteen minutes later, with the hair near his face damp, and smelling of toothpaste. Carrie, also smelling of toothpaste, smiled sleepily at him. 

“You could have brushed your teeth here,” she said. There are double sinks.”

Quinn had started to pull back the sheets on his side of the bed, but he stopped and walked back around to her side. He sat down next to her, took her hand, and looked at her gravely.

“I defend the interests of the United States of America for a lot of the reasons you might expect, but mostly because of our surfeit of bathrooms. I think every person should have his or her own bathroom if at all possible, and I try to claim my own whenever I can. That kind of privacy is precious.” 

There might have been a word for the look on Carrie’s face, but not in English. She was gobsmacked and alarmingly charmed by the weirdness of Peter Quinn.

“What about when you’re...working?” she asked. It was the only response she could think of.

“I don’t expect that when I’m working, and I don’t think about it. I’ve had to wash, piss, and shit in the worst possible conditions imaginable, and occasionally, in full public view. I don’t have a problem with that. I just take advantage of having my own bathroom when I can, and will sometimes go out of my way, or pay extra money to make it happen. Please don’t _ever_ take my methods for getting my own bathroom as a rejection of you.” He squeezed her hand and gave her a toothpaste-y kiss.

Carrie didn’t know what to do other than laugh. “I will remember that,” she said, and then, because a thought suddenly occurred to her, she lifted her eyebrows. “And I will raise you a preference of mine that _you_ are never to take as a rejection.”

Quinn nodded and waited.

“I don’t like to touch anyone when I need sleep. I have a hard time falling asleep in general, but when I am in bed with another person, it’s impossible. It’s too hot, or I’m afraid to move and wake them up, or they’re snoring right in my ear, or I stay turned on because they’re so close.”

“Or, when you just wanted to fuck and you’re done and they don’t get the hint,” Quinn added, helpfully.

“I was trying to be...decorous,” Carrie said, searching for the right word. “Sometimes I worry you think I’m unladylike.” Her smile was mischievous, and she trailed a finger up his back, underneath his t-shirt.

Quinn’s eyes darkened and he kissed her, and that kiss nearly caught fire and cost them another forty-five minutes of sleep, but he managed to pull away and trot back to his side of the bed, all the while holding Carrie’s gaze. He climbed in and turned his back to her.

“We need sleep, Carrie. Stop looking at me,” he said. “I can feel it.” 

“I’m not looking at you, Quinn,” said Carrie, drilling holes in the back of him with her eyes. “You’re so full of yourself.”

“Well, if you’d like to be full of myself at any point tomorrow, and I’m pretty sure you do, you need to let me sleep.” 

“Oh, Quinn,” was all Carrie said before she turned off the light.

Now, nearly nine hours later, Carrie is tempted to slide across the king-size space that separates them and whisper something delightfully dirty in his ear, but she decides against it. She’s had a wonderful sleep, possibly the best in years, and she wants Quinn to feel the same way. She will let him wake up naturally. She rolls over and creeps out of bed, then tiptoes toward the door. She snags her duffle bag and phone and closes the door gently behind her. 

Carrie wants to make a pot of coffee, but can only find individual pods. She makes a face; she’s not the sort to nurture with food (or anything, really) but she wants to prepare _something_ for Quinn. As a gesture. She sets her pod to run, places another pod, mug, and spoon together on the counter, then heads toward one of the prettiest views she’s ever seen.

Windows and sliding glass doors run the length of the cabin on the wall opposite the kitchen, and beyond them, the Great Smoky Mountains, sparkling under cloud-dotted blue skies and bright July sun, roll and ripple into the distance. 

She sets her bag on the porch swing, and digs out her medication. Birth control pills, check—current through yesterday morning. She swallows today’s pill dry. She also transfers the box of condoms buried at the bottom of the duffel into an accessible side pocket. She’s not sure how to bring the issue up, but she guesses that revealing she was actually on the pill when Franny was conceived will help it stick the landing. 

She missed the previous evening’s dose of lithium, but she takes her morning pill, and promises herself she will take the next one at 7 pm. Promptly. No matter what Quinn might be doing to her. 

Satisfied with the state of her pharmaceutical self-care, Carrie trots back inside and pours a little dry creamer into her coffee. She listens for a few seconds for sounds of life from the bedroom, but there’s nothing. Smiling, Carrie takes her coffee to the balcony, and watches the clouds cast shadows on the velvety, blue-green mountains. 

Fifteen or twenty minutes later, she hears a toilet flush, and then the bedroom door opens. She cranes her neck around and squints into the darker interior of the room. Quinn walks toward her, and rubs a hand over his face. His hair is still too short to be morning-tragic, but his eyes are a little puffy and his t-shirt is rumpled. 

“There’s something we haven’t addressed, yet,” he says as he steps onto the balcony. No _good morning_ , or _hello_ , or _beautiful day._

Carrie raises her eyebrows.

“The pink heart-shaped tub, Carrie. Did you know about that?”

She rolls her eyes.

“I think that was part of our upgrade.”

“I don’t like it,” he says, sliding onto the porch swing next to her. 

“I thought you weren’t even going to use that bathroom?” Carrie says. “Always stick to the plan, Quinn.”

“Don’t try to distract me. The tub is a problem. I’m a thirty-three year old man with a job that is as far away from pink heart-shaped tubs as you can imagine.” (Carrie stores the age away—she wasn’t actually sure how old he was.) “I really like the idea of getting you all slippery and soapy but I can’t get in that thing.”

“Is your manhood threatened?” Carrie asks. She sips her coffee.

“No.” Quinn says. “Just my dignity. I’d have to quit my job. You can’t...do what I do if you know that you’ve also lounged in a pink, heart-shaped tub. That image could crop up anytime and throw you off.”

“You’re already quitting, so what does it matter?” Carrie says lightly. “Let’s go right now and take pictures. I bet there’s Dollywood bubble bath in here somewhere. I wanna get one with you wet, your hair slicked back, stepping out of that pink tub with nothing but a sniper rifle and a cluster of strategically arranged bubbles. I’ll handle the bubble arrangement myself. 

Quinn is staring straight ahead. He does not look amused. 

Carrie leans toward him, into his field of vision.

“What’s wrong? Are you _actually_ mad about the tub?”

“No,” Quinn says. “I’m just a little confused about why you think I’m “already quitting.” 

Carrie tilts her head, and her eyes narrow. “Because you _told_ me you were planning to quit your job. Has that changed?”

“Probably not.... But I wasn’t talking about quitting it this week.”

“This month?” 

“Uhh, I don’t know. I haven’t put a plan together yet. I’ll keep you posted.”

“Posted?” Carrie says, in a very particular voice.

 _Fuck_ , thinks Quinn. “Yeah, Carrie, posted. When I figure out exactly what my plan is I will let you know.” 

“Yeah, okay,” says Carrie, turning back toward the mountains. She considers tossing her coffee at him--she’s pretty sure it’s not even close to hot enough to burn—but instead, she takes a deep breath and picks up her phone. “You should go get some coffee, Quinn. I set the stuff out for you.” Her voice is arctic.

Quinn is feeling a little arctic himself. _What the hell?_ he thinks. He heads inside, and stands at the kitchen counter for several minutes while his coffee drips. His only motion is the clenching and unclenching of his jaw. 

Carrie stares unseeingly at the Washington Post article she is pretending to read on her phone. “I’ll keep you posted” keeps replaying in her head. Eventually she has heated her own pot to boiling, and she charges through the living room and into the little kitchen, where Quinn is drinking his terrible coffee at the table. He makes eye contact with her the moment she crosses the threshold, and maintains it the whole time. 

“I thought we were ‘getting out together’ Quinn? ‘Getting out together’ sounds like something we _plan_ together. It doesn’t sound like you keeping me fucking ‘posted.’” 

“We can plan it together, as soon as I decide what I’m doing.”

“What? That doesn’t even make sense.”

“It makes sense to me.”

“Well, okay, then I’m going to decide what _I’m_ doing,” Carrie says, “and I may or may not keep _you_ posted.”

Quinn looks at her for a beat. His eyes are icy. “Deal,” he says, flatly.

Carrie’s stomach drops. Quinn’s coldness is unsettling. It is both not at all and exactly what she expects from him. Either way, she’s not going to deal with it. She wheels around and heads toward the bedroom, only to storm back out to the balcony, where she left her duffle bag and phone. She grabs them and storms the other way, back to the bedroom. A few minutes later, she emerges, hair in a ragged ponytail, dressed in sneakers, leggings, and a yoga tee. She heads to the front door and slams it behind her, hard. 

Quinn hasn’t moved. He doesn’t flinch when the door slams. His eyes are loosely focused on the mountains beyond the balcony, and he is wondering why he just did what he did. Objectively, he understands more or less why Carrie is angry at him. It is not as clear why he is angry at her. He thinks about it for a long time, he doesn’t know how long, and he is still sitting at the table when Carrie returns from her run.

She passes Quinn without speaking and heads to the bedroom. He hears the shower turn on. He stands up and stretches, then walks toward the second bedroom and the second shower. He wants to be clean and dressed for whatever’s coming next. 

Carrie cries a lot in the shower. She didn’t cry when she was running, and the exercise cleared her head enough that by the time she returns to the cabin she thinks she is past the crying point altogether. She’s feeling a little optimistic, even, until she sees Quinn sitting in the exact same position he was in forty-five minutes earlier, just staring out at the beautiful day. He doesn’t acknowledge her return at all. 

Carrie doesn’t understand why, but it is clear that Quinn is angry with her, or disgusted with her, or _something_ , and she wonders, with a cramping heart, if everything that she’d come to believe to be true affection on his part was actually something else. Maybe he’d just wanted to sleep with her for so long it had morphed into some mirage of love that even he believed for a while. Perhaps last night had sated him, and cleared his head, and now he’d woken up in a place and with a woman he no longer wanted. Maybe that’s why he picked a fight about a pink, heart-shaped tub. 

She must have gotten it wrong again. Quinn isn’t married, or a terrorist, or some stranger she met in a liquor store. He isn’t her boss, or an unwitting teenage asset. But he is clearly a mistake. Intentionally or not, he has deceived her—or set the stage for her to deceive herself—into thinking he loves her and wants to make a life with her. 

Carrie has no doubt she will survive, and possibly even thrive, without Quinn. But for several minutes, she sobs quietly for the loss of the imperfect, feisty, loving life with him she’d imagined for the last forty-eight hours. 

After Quinn is showered and dressed, he sits on the balcony and waits. Carrie has been back for an hour, and the water stopped running forty minutes ago, but she has not yet emerged from the master bedroom. Quinn has an almost inhuman store of patience, but in this particular case, it is starting to wear thin. He is ready to get this over with. Eventually, he knocks at the bedroom door. Carrie does not answer. 

He knocks again. “Hey, Carrie. Can I come in?”

There are a few moments of nothing, and then Carrie says, “I’ll come out.” She opens the door a few seconds later and brushes past him, fixing him with a murderous look. She sits on the couch in the living area. Quinn follows and takes a seat on a facing easy chair. 

“Okay,” Carrie says, “what? What the fuck happened? Why are you mad at me?” Her chin is wobbling a little, but the rest of her face looks ready for combat.

Quinn takes a deep breath. He is ready to say what he needs to say, but he is terrified.

“I need to know why you called me back,” is what he finally says. His jaw muscles tense.

“Whaaaa..?

Everything on Quinn’s face is struggling. “Why did you change your mind about me in Missouri? I need to know what made you call me back.”

Carrie stares at Quinn. She does not feel like telling him what prompted her to call him back that morning, not now, when she is angry, and hurt, and afraid. At the time, it had felt like a door had been blown open to reveal something lovely she could already feel and hear, but could only accept by seeing. She is afraid now that she’d misunderstood, and she doesn’t want to reveal her mistake. 

“This feels unfair, Quinn. I’m not the one who woke up this morning acting different than they did a few hours earlier. Why do you need to know _why_ I called you back?” she asks.

Quinn is quiet for maybe fifteen seconds, which feels like a very long time to both of them. His hands are on his thighs, and one thumb taps out a nervous, high-speed rhythm. He leans back in the chair and turns his face toward the bright light flooding in through the glass wall to his left. He is still in profile as he begins speaking, and Carrie watches shadows and bright light move across the planes of his brow and nose and cheekbones.

He takes another deep breath.

“I need to know what made you call me back because not knowing makes me mistrustful, and mistrust makes me angry. I don’t understand how you got from ‘I’m no good for you’—which is a nice way of saying ‘I have never and will never think of us as a couple’—to calling me back twenty minutes later and saying the things you said. I don’t know how you got from ‘Don’t pressure me’ to booking a cabin with a pink, heart-shaped tub. I don’t know how you got from two years of being oblivious to, or maybe worse, taking advantage of my...feelings....to being indignant that I might make my own decisions about when I’m quitting _my_ job. So I need to know, Carrie. I need to understand how that happened, because I can’t put myself in your shoes. I haven’t ever jumped gears like that, so my concern is that it was an impulse driven by loneliness, or horniness, or boredom, and that you’ll regret it as suddenly as you acted on it. I have been afraid since the moment we disconnected from that second call that you were going to take it all back. I almost didn’t answer when you called again to tell me to fly into Knoxville. I was honestly afraid you’d abandoned me at the airport. And I really resented how you assumed that we should be making life decisions together because, even though I know I set this in motion by suggesting we get out together, your initial reaction and the entire way we got from there to here kind of reset the plan for me. I realized I’d gotten ahead of myself. Or ahead of yourself, I don’t know. But now we’ve moved _somewhere_ , and the only way I can figure out where that might be is to know where we started. Is to know where you started. So, I’m asking you, Carrie—what made you call me back?”

Carrie is crying, hard, and she is looking at Quinn with an expression he has never seen before. He has no idea what she wants to say, but it is clear she wants to say something. She keeps opening her mouth, and then choking on her sobs, and closing it again. She covers her face with her hands.

“Carrie,” he says, leaning toward her, “are you okay?”

She doesn’t answer directly, but she stands up, takes two steps to his chair, and crawls into his lap. She is still crying.

Quinn is startled, but his arms settle around her slowly. Her head is under his chin, and he is relieved to feel her slowly quiet down. After an eternity, she is able to speak, and she does so without shifting her position.

“What made me call you back, Quinn, is that it took me until that moment to realize what you were saying to me at Maggie’s. I didn’t recognize how you felt about me until I was sitting in that stupid motel room. I don’t know why, Quinn, but I just didn’t. I guess I knew you had a particular regard for me, but if anyone had pressed me about it I would have guessed I was your...work wife. Because if anyone had pressed me about how I thought of you, I would have called you my work husband.”

“Is this a thing?” asks Quinn.

“What? Work spouses? Yeah. But I’m not finished.”

“Good.”

“Okay, maybe “work spouses” is confusing the issue. I knew you were my _friend_. And even though you are much better at being a real friend than I am, I’d assumed that you considered me a friend to you, as well. And since friends do things for each other, I never looked at the things I asked of you as taking advantage. I am so sorry that it felt like it.”

Quinn doesn’t say anything, but he rubs her arm gently.

Carrie continues, and it is here that her voice starts to thicken again. “So, that’s the clearest explanation I can give about why I didn’t know you had...feelings. That, and the many, many ways you’ve told me to go fuck myself. ” 

“And because you were in love with Brody,” Quinn adds quietly 

“Maybe,” Carrie says. “Maybe not.”

She is speaking around a lump in her throat. She is afraid, more afraid than she’s ever been about anything that wasn’t an actual physical threat, but Carrie Mathison is nothing if not brave.

“I thought for a long time that I was in love with Brody, I did. I was definitely in _something_ with him. But when I realized I was in love with you, Quinn, it didn’t feel the same at all. Not at all. Not even close.”

Quinn’s fingers, which had been travelling a slow, short course up and down Carrie’s bare arm, froze. 

“Oh,” was all he said, very quietly. For several moments they sat chest-to-chest, feeling each other’s hearts pounding. “So...when was that?”

“When we ambushed you in Astrid’s garage. Right after you shot Schweig in the leg.”

Quinn gently took hold of her shoulders and held her away so that he could look at her. 

“ _That’s_ when you fell in love with me?”

“Well, that’s when I clearly recognized I was in love with you. I suddenly, desperately, wanted you to be happy and not have to shoot people, and something inside me said “you love him.” But I might have had a few inklings earlier.”

“What inklings?”

 _Fuck,_ Carrie thinks, _why did I say inklings, plural? I can’t tell him the second one. Ever._ "Why is this so important to you?” she asks, stalling to invent a substitute second inkling if pressed.

“Carrie, please.”

“Okay...when you picked me up at the airport in Islamabad, you asked me why I took Kabul, even though I couldn’t take dependents. And the word ‘dependents’ made me think of family, of course, and the first thing I blurted out was that I’d wanted to take you. And in my head, I was thinking ‘Why the hell did “family” make me think of Quinn? Why did I say that?’ It freaked me out for a minute. But then I saw Sandy’s face on the television…and it went out of my mind for a while. But I started feeling different. I was more...aware of you.”

Quinn pulled Carrie back into his arms. He didn’t say anything right away, but he kissed her hair and was still for a while, waiting out his own internal maelstrom of emotions.

“Oh,” he said, eventually. “I don’t think I was aware of you being aware.”

Carrie was grateful that a single inkling seemed to be enough for Quinn, because she had one more secret that she would never tell him, not under pain of death. It was understandable that she’d not seen the “dependents” inkling for what it was. It was _not_ understandable, though, that she’d not seen the second inkling for what it was, because, well, it was a corker.

Carrie’s second “inkling” happened in the middle of sex with Aayan. As that sweet, lovely, inexperienced young man moved aimlessly on top of her, Carrie heard a voice in her head that said, quite loudly, _You know this is wrong in every way, Carrie. This is wrong, there must be another option, and for god's sake, what will Quinn think?_ Carrie gasped because the voice was so startling, but she’d tried to shake it off and get back to faking. The voice was having none of it, however, because seconds later it shouted, _Why are you doing this? Or more to the point_ (that’s what the voice said, honestly), _why aren’t you doing this with Quinn, because it would be A LOT better?_ And that’s when Carrie started to cry, in a CIA safe house in Islamabad, and tried to convince her recently deflowered young asset that it was because she was happy. 

Now, many weeks later, in a Dollywood cabin in Tennessee, she was crying again, but this time it was because she truly was happy. And this time, Quinn was kissing her feverishly, and walking her backwards to the bedroom to prove, yet again, that the shouty voice in Carrie’s head told no lies.


	9. Plenty of Room on That Door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is pretty much what you'd expect to happen after Carrie and Quinn confess their real feelings. Finally. 
> 
> So, there's a lot of smutty spice, my friends. And a few smiles, I hope. Because I can't help it—I think they're hilarious.

Quinn has Carrie completely stripped before they hit the threshold of the bedroom, and his own clothes disappear as if by magic. His mouth is moving from her mouth, to her neck, to her nipples, and back up again, and one hand is steadying her back while the other is wrapped in her hair. He falls with her to the bed, and enters her without warning—Carrie is already very wet and very ready, but she gasps at the unexpectedness of it. 

Quinn puts a hand to her chin and looks at her, his eyes dark and lidded and cheeks flushed. He withdraws his length from her, leaving only the tip embedded for a few seconds, and then thrusts back, hard. He pulls out again and pauses, then slams back, burying himself in her as deeply as he can. The third time he pulls up, Carrie breaks his gaze to look down between them, to where they are joined, and he is slick and shiny with her. She gasps again, turned on beyond belief, then looks back into his face, into his imponderably, hauntingly intense eyes, as he begins to well and truly fuck her. 

Quinn sets up a relentless and uncomplicated rhythm that is about something other than physical pleasure—she knows, somehow, that this is about claiming her. Claiming _them_. She can’t possibly know exactly what Quinn is feeling, but she recognizes that right now, something primal and possessive has been unleashed in him, and that its only acceptable expression is here, in this way, between the two of them. It is one of the most intensely emotional—intensely partnered—feelings she has ever had, and she joins his rhythm, hips slamming up to meet his, legs thrown over the small of his back, arms wrapped around his head, and her lips whispering “I love you” over and over in his ear. 

Quinn grinds into her and cries out when he comes, panting her name and digging a hard hand into her shoulder as he buries his face in her neck. Tremors travel his body as he lies heavy on Carrie, and she feels wetness every place they touch: sweat, semen, and tears. It is one of the few times in her life that her own orgasm is of no interest to her; this is about Quinn, and something he needs, and the idea of disturbing that in this moment is almost obscene.

“Ummm, I’m sorry,” Quinn says, later.

“For that?”

“Yeah. That was a little caveman-ish.”

“No,” Carrie says. “Or maybe it was, but it kinda felt like you needed it. Whatever it was, you do not need to apologize. I do not want you to apologize. Besides, it could be fun to be a caveman’s woman every once in a while.”

“Really?” Quinn looks intrigued.

 _Fucking men_ , Carrie thinks in amused disgust. She walks it back. “I mean, every once in a rare while, under extreme conditions.”

“Like the next time I find out you are in love with me...finally?

“I don’t think that can happen again, Quinn. The cat’s out of the bag.”

“But something that big—that’s a potential greenlight for that kind of behavior?”

“Let’s play it by ear.” Carrie says. “So, speaking of being in love, you didn’t tell me when you fell for me.”

“No?” Quinn says. 

“No.”

“Do I have to?”

“Well, I can’t force you, but I told you about me, and now I’m curious.” 

Quinn is silent for a moment, looking toward the ceiling and pursing his lips. ”I thought you were fuckable right away.”

“Duh,” says Carrie, and bends her head to run a delicate, teasing tongue around his nipple. “That’s not what I mean. And frankly, I thought you were fuckable for the first fifteen seconds I knew you. And then you opened your mouth.”

“I’ve heard that from other people,” Quinn says. 

“Yeah, well, you should have maybe paid attention. But back to my question. When did you fall for me?”

“So, remember that first week, when you met Brody at the hotel bar, and he left, and you were convinced he made you, and Saul and I told you to not to go after him, and you went after him, anyway?”

“Yes, Quinn, I remember that.”

“That was when I fell for you. I was so goddamn mad, and I said to Saul, ‘how many times you gotta tell her something?’ and he said ‘A lot,’ and that was it.”

Carrie cocks her head. “Really? I didn’t think that was one of my better moments.”

“Oh, Carrie, it was fucking magnificent.”

Carrie looks dubious and pleased at the same time. 

“As the team leader, I was ripshit, don’t get me wrong. But as me, I don’t know... I was just gone. Jesus, was I gone.” 

Carrie has a flash of all the things that have happened between them since the moment she’d stalked out of that hotel bar, and she gets a lump in her throat. She lays her head on his chest to hide her reaction, and after a few moments she regains her composure.

“Speaking of magnificent, Quinn, I’m going to tell you something, but I don’t want it to go to your head.”

“That sounds promising.”

“Don’t let it go to your head.”

Quinn sighs. “Okay. I won’t let it go to my head.”

Carrie slides her hand down his torso and tries to encircle his semi-erect cock with her thumb and forefinger. “Your penis is beautiful, Quinn. Like your hands. You’ve got gorgeous fingers—long, and solid, and well-formed—and your penis looks just like them.”

“That’s probably because they’ve spent so much time together.” 

They both laugh, but as the laughter starts to die down, Carrie feels a sudden, jolt-y swell of desire, and she rises up to put her mouth on Quinn’s. She kisses him slowly, puts both hands around his face, and swings her left leg over his body. Her center, wet and warm, hovers just over his torso until she presses down and begins to grind. Quinn bites at Carrie’s lower lip, and makes a noise deep in his throat.

Carrie breaks the kiss and straightens up, arching her back and rotating her hips. She reaches a hand behind her, and is gratified to find Quinn’s beautiful cock hard as stone. She repositions herself several inches back, braces herself with one hand on his torso, and uses her other hand to move him into position. She bites her lip and looks down at the two of them, and they both watch as she slides, with delicious slowness, down the length of him.

“Fuck,” they whisper at the same time.

Carrie begins to move her hips in small, tight, grinding circles that give her the friction she is craving. She takes one of her breasts in hand and teases her own nipple, squeezing it just hard enough to send a jolt of pain that translates into something electric in her abdomen. She reaches for Quinn’s right hand, rises off his cock, inserts his first two fingers inside herself to lubricate them, and then sinks back down on him with a moan. She slides his fingers between the lips of her labia, and begins to rock purposefully as Quinn puts those beautiful fingers to use. Carrie gasps and grinds harder.

Quinn sits up and spreads his legs, shifting Carrie’s bottom to the surface of the bed, then crosses his ankles behind her, pinning her to him. For a minute, they sit together like that, rocking and grinding slowly, foreheads pressed together, Quinn’s right hand teasing Carrie’s clit until she whimpers. 

“Lay back,” he whispers as her noises start to get faster and more frantic. 

“No, no, no, no—don’t stop. Make me come now,” she says, pleading, breathless, barely able to finish her words.

“Lay back,” he repeats, and withdraws his hand from her. He straightens his legs and pushes her gently onto her back. He crawls over her and puts his mouth first to one breast and then the other, tonguing, nipping, sucking, sometimes gentle, sometimes not, his tongue warm and wet. He stays there for what feels to Carrie like hours, teasing her, making her impossibly hot, and ignoring her as she thrusts her hips at him in an unspoken plea to kiss her there, between her legs, in the center of her world. His mouth dances everyplace but where she most wants it; he kisses her mouth, her face, her neck, her shoulders, her breasts, her hips, and eventually, the exquisitely tender areas where her thighs join her torso. His mouth is inches away from the center of her, but he withholds.

“What do you want, Carrie?” he asks, his lips millimeters above her skin.

“To come,” she begs, her voice sounding like it belongs to someone else.

“I’ll think about it,” he says, and finally lowers his mouth to her. His tongue flicks firmly up and down the tip of her clit, and Carrie arches her back and curses him. Quinn smiles a small, private smile, and begins to suck on her tenderly, probing the surrounding valleys with his tongue. And when it seems clear that she is seconds away from coming, he slips two of his beautiful fingers inside her, curls them slightly, and finds the soft velvety spot that he already knows will put her over the top. Carrie feels a white-hot connection between the interior friction of Quinn’s fingers, and the external stimulation of his tongue on her clit, and she is suddenly in freefall, crying out and rocking her hips, and pushing Quinn’s face into the soaking wetness between her legs.

“Now fuck me,” she pants, relaxing her hold on his head. Her voice is hoarse and low, and Quinn, always reliable, obliges.

“Roll over,” he whispers, and as soon as she does, he pulls her hips up and back toward him, his fingers digging into her soft skin. Carrie, who is not fully through her orgasm, shudders at his touch. She sinks to her forearms, pushing her ass as high in the air as she can, desperate for the feel of him inside her. 

Quinn probes briefly at her entrance, teasing her, slipping the head of his cock inside and then back out, and Carrie, who cannot think of anything other than wanting the fullness of him, of wanting the width and hardness of him stretching her, nearly screams in frustration. But before she can make another sound, before she can drop back onto him and take what she wants by sexual blitzkrieg, Quinn slams into her, and Carries grunts in pure, wanton satisfaction.

Quinn prompts Carrie to raise up from her forearms to her hands, lays his chest to her back, and wraps his arms around her. He cups a breast in each hand, a nipple between each thumb and forefinger, and begins to thrust, slowly and deliberately at first, then picking up speed as Carrie rocks against him. They move like this for several minutes, Quinn taunting himself by approaching his peak then backing off, and Carrie maintaining the rhythm of her rocking and internal contractions to enhance his thrusting. Quinn is almost delirious with the sensation of Carrie’s tight, undulating warmth, and when he starts to feel he won’t be able to control it much longer, he lets go of Carrie’s breasts, moves his right hand between her legs, and uses his left hand to turn her face far enough to the side to kiss. The kiss should be awkward--he only has access to half her mouth--but the desire and heat and need of it raise them both to another level of abandoned arousal. 

The fingers of Quinn’s right hand, buried inside Carrie, once again find their mark; Carrie stiffens, then starts to writhe and grind and gasp out his name. Quinn finally let himself go, pounding mercilessly into her before he loses control of his movements and grabs at her blindly, burying the upper part of his face in her shoulder. “Christ, Carrie,” he murmurs when he finally can, his voice still shredded with lust and release, “you...oh fuck...how do...fuck me.” 

Quinn collapses to the bed, pulling Carrie down with him, and wraps his arms around her tightly.

“I’m hungry,” Carrie announces. 

Quinn is tracing concentric circles around her navel. “There’s a ton of food out there from park management.” 

“I need vegetables—a salad.”

“Not a bad idea. What do you know about nearby restaurants?”

“I did make note of a few when I was researching this. Let me get my phone.” Carrie throws herself out of bed and grabs her phone from the dresser across the room. She is completely unconcerned about her stark nudity in the stark sunlight.

“By the way,” Quinn says, reminded of a question he’d wondered about earlier in the day, just after they’d fought and she’d left him alone to go running, “what made you think of Dollywood? You and I and Dollywood don’t seem like an obvious match.”

Carrie and her phone settled back on the bed, and she pulled a sheet across her lap. “I thought it would be fun and silly, but also sort of romantic.”

“But what made you _think_ of Dollywood at all?

Carrie evaluated Quinn’s face for a second or so, trying to figure out how much of the truth she could tell without sounding ridiculous. She decides to just go for it. 

“After I called you—called you back—in Missouri, I was waiting to go visit my mother. I turned on the television because I couldn’t read or work, or do anything with my brain except think about you, so I needed a distraction. The movie The Bodyguard was on—”

“The one with Whitney Houston?” Quinn interrupts. He looks down at her. His expression is generally...interested, but it is layered with something else Carrie can’t read. 

“Yep. The one with Whitney Houston. Anyway, I liked that movie when I was a kid, both Maggie and I did, so I kept watching, because it was easy on my Quinn-rattled brain. There’s a scene where Whitney and Kevin Costner are in a little diner or something, and some cover of “I Will Always Love You” comes on the jukebox and they dance—”

Quinn’s face is becoming more unreadable by the second, but Carrie presses on because she can’t back out now. 

“So, that song was written by Dolly Parton,” she says.

“The Whitney song?”

“Yep, Dolly wrote it, and recorded it, but well, Whitney… So, that’s how Dolly Parton occurred to me in the first place, and, you know how it is when your brain puts stuff together, it was only a split second until I thought about something else I hadn’t thought about in years. The reason I even know that the song was written by Dolly Parton was that my mother loved Dolly, at least back then, and she's the one who told us.” 

Carrie is starting to be worried by Quinn’s expression. It looks almost pained. “Are you...okay?” Carrie asks.

“Yes—is that it?”

“I’m not sure it’s safe to go on. You look weird.”

“No, I’m fine. Is that the end of the story?”

“N-n-no…The main part of the story is that one night when I was about nine or ten years old, after my parents sent us to bed, I came back downstairs for something. I found them dancing together to one of my mom’s favorite Dolly Parton songs. They didn’t see me, I don’t think, and there was nothing happening that a kid shouldn’t see, but I just kinda knew that that moment was not meant for me. I snuck away, but every time I heard that song afterwards, I could picture the looks on their faces, and, well, no one wants to think about their parents being hot for each other, or romantic and mushy, but that song always gets to me, even after my mother broke my dad’s heart ten years later. It’s romantic and sexy, in an old-timey, country way. And I was feeling _very_ romantic that day in the motel room, after I called you back. On top of that, I told you how in Astrid’s garage, after you shot Schweig, I had this bizarre desire—it was a craving, almost—to see you happy. I wanted to see you involved in something about _life_ , not about death. Something positive, or fun, or whatever. Something that has absolutely nothing to do with our work, or our problems, or the past few months. So, that’s how it all came together: The Bodyguard made me think of Dolly Parton, which made me think of the most romantic Dolly Parton song there is, which made me also remember that Dolly Parton had an amusement park—I mean that’s guaranteed happy, right? What’s happier than an amusement park? And I knew it had to sorta maybe be on the route home, and I looked it up, and that was that. Now we’re here. The roller coaster kinda fucked it up, but otherwise...” Carrie trails off hesitantly as she looks up at Quinn. He has an arm around her, but he is staring at the ceiling.

“Why do people think that song is romantic?” is what he says finally. “I hate that song.”

“Do you know it? Wait--I don’t think I said the name.” Carrie says, shaking her head.

Quinn looks down at her..

“It’s not ‘I Will Always Love You’?”

“No! No, no, no. That’s kind of a breakup song. That’s not roman--no, Quinn. No, that’s not the song I was talking about.”

“Good,” Quinn says, with visible relief, “because I hated the ending of that movie, and that song, is, well, it’s the ending of the movie.”

“You’ve seen The Bodyguard?” Carrie is having a _very_ hard time imagining this. Once a man has cursed you roundly because you won’t get off the bomb he was hoping to explode under a Taliban SUV, it’s difficult to imagine him watching The Bodyguard.

“I’m human, Carrie,” he says, reading her thoughts. “I’ve seen movies before. And the ending of that one pissed me off. They could’ve made it work. Fuck their stupid airport kiss. Not good enough.”

A slow, delighted smile spreads across Carrie’s face, and she blinks at him, incredulous.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Quinn says. “You know it’s true. Frank Farmer loved her. And she loved him.”

“Wow, okay. How’d you feel about Titanic?”

“About the ending? The same way everyone feels: there was plenty of room on that door. That was bullshit.”

Carrie laughs, and reaches up to smooth his scowling eyebrows.

“Well, Quinn, those are not the endings I have in mind for us, and “I Will Always Love You” is not the song my parents danced to.”

“Then what song was it?” Quinn looks curious now. 

Carrie fumbles for her phone, which had slipped in between them while she was talking. 

“I’ll play it,” she says, then looks up at him sharply. “It’s a super cheesy, super country song—are you going to hate that?” 

“No, Carrie,” he says, gently. “I just want to hear it.”

Carrie searches briefly and finds the song somewhere in the wilds of the internet. She watches his face as he listens, and in short order, Quinn and Carrie are doing their own dance. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song in question is called "Fuel to the Flame"  
>  _  
> You kindle the fire of love inside me  
>  Each time our lips meet  
> I'm not strong when we're alone  
> Your kisses make me weak  
> You must know how I feel  
> But do you feel the same  
> Every time you kiss me  
> You add fuel to the flame  
>   
> My eyes light up when I see you  
> I burn with desire  
> Each time you're near  
> You say you'll care  
> But still I'm not sure  
> But please don't ask me to love you  
> If you're not gonna change my name  
>   
> Every time you touch me  
> You add fuel to the flame  
> This fire you started inside me  
> Has reached my very soul  
> You're adding fuel to a flame  
> That's already burning out of control  
> When you give me your name  
> I give you everything  
> Every time you kiss me  
> Adds fuel to the flame  
> Yes every time you touch me  
> You add fuel to the flame ___
> 
> _  
> _Songwriters: Bill Owens / Dolly Parton__  
> 


	10. I Will Push It If I Want To

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carrie and Quinn have an argument. (I tried to stop it, but I couldn't.)

Quinn wakes up the next morning and finds Carrie, in a t-shirt and shorts, spooned tightly against him like an oversized blonde tick. Quinn glances down at her tumbled head and smiles. 

_So much for ‘don’t touch me while I’m sleeping.’_

_I’m still not giving up my own bathroom_. 

The last thing he remembers is watching her disentangle herself from him and head off to take a shower. “I need to drink water and...clean up...so I don’t get an infection,” she said, raising her eyebrows in a way that Quinn recognized was meaningful to her, but not at all clear to him. He’d wondered vaguely if he should be insulted, but he was too tired. His last thought was that he would ask about it when she got out of the shower, but he’d must have fallen asleep before that happened. 

He is grateful for a few minutes to think before Carrie wakes up. Two weeks earlier he had been hiding in an abandoned Islamabad apartment building, eating old naan and older MREs, relieving himself in a bucket, studying scraps of unlawfully gained intelligence about Haqqani’s possible, maybe, could be movements, and cadging bomb parts to replace the one he’d had to abandon after Carrie had fucked his first plan. The last of the embassy staff had been gone for twenty-four hours, and he was on an unsanctioned, unsupported revenge mission on their behalf. He had no family other than a child who didn’t know him, and no real friends other than one woman he was hopelessly in love with, and one who, if he was honest, was probably in love with him. He had felt, then, and for as long as he could remember, like the most fucked up person in the world. 

And now, two weeks later, he is here, in a weirdly fancy cabin with beautiful views and a pink, heart-shaped tub. With Carrie. With a future that might look a little less vicious. 

It is a lot to process, and Quinn knows, instinctively, that he needs to do it slowly. His psyche won’t trust too much good at once; it has to be metered, like a scuba diver avoiding the bends. All he can deal with today is that Carrie said she loves him. That she is _in love_ with him. That she knew she was in love with him at least a couple weeks before he kissed her. 

That’s the chunk he’s going to concentrate on for a few days.

What this might mean for next week, or next year, he cannot know. 

But for now, it is everything. 

“Carrie,” he says gently, kissing her brow. “It’s time to wake up. You wanted to be on the road by eight. It’s...umm...7:14.”

“Eight is still 46 minutes away,” she says sleepily. Her eyes are closed.

“You need to pack. And shower.”

“I showered last night. Wake me up in half an hour.”

“Oh, right. By the way, what did you mean about avoiding an infection?”

“A UTI.”

“What?”

“A urinary tract infection. Women can get them when they have a lot of sex. Happens for a lot of honeymooning brides. Look it up.” 

Quinn is a little embarrassed that he doesn’t know, but he has never spent much time around women in this way, and he has never had as much sex in a 36 hour period as he and Carrie have had. She’d made it clear on the drive between the amusement park and the cabin that she was on the pill, but given the fact that nothing has a 100% effectiveness rate (see, Franny) he was relieved when she’d finally broken out the condoms. As much as he already adored Franny, a pregnancy would be...not great right now. He feels shitty for not being more responsible himself—he'd thought about buying condoms before he left DC, but he was already afraid that Carrie was going to change her mind any minute, and he'd felt, irrationally, that planning contraception would be a jinx. Not his proudest moment, he knew, but he would make up for it somehow.

Carrie’s eyes suddenly fly open, and she turns her head to look up at him. “Not that I think this is a honeymoon. Don’t take it the wrong way.”

“I get it,” Quinn says. “People have a lot of sex on their honeymoon, and we have had a lot of sex.”

“A lot,” Carrie agrees. She smiles at him. “A lot. And most of it was fantastic.”

“Wait—what wasn’t fantastic?”

“Don’t worry about it. You can’t hit it out of the park all the time.”

“Uh...wait—was it the caveman bit?”

“No, Quinn—that was actually pretty memorable.”

“Well, then—what?” Quinn looks a little stressed, and Carrie finally takes pity on him. 

“I’m just fucking with you, Quinn. It was all fantastic.”

His expression doesn’t change, but Carrie can tell his insides are smiling. He slides a little further under the sheet and kisses her neck lightly. 

“Should we...?”

“Absolutely not,” Carrie says, flipping to face him and planting a half-dozen kisses all over his face. “We have to be back by 5 or 6 tonight.”

“Oh, thank God,” says Quinn. “I am so sore.” 

They are packed up and in the car by 8:09, and as Quinn steers the Jeep toward the main road, Carrie looks wistfully at the gorgeous mountain views to their left.

“I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to do some hiking,” she says.

“Carrie,” Quinn says, “you know that wasn’t gonna happen, not on this trip. We weren’t getting out of that bed. Besides, hiking isn’t fun to me. I ‘hike’ when I work, and I’ve done enough of it.”

“This is not exactly hiking into the Swat Valley to hunt Taliban,” Carrie says.

“It looks a lot like it. The Swat is beautiful, too.”

Carrie makes a face and casts around for ways to refute his point, but can’t find any, so she switches topics. 

“Coffee?” she asks.

“And breakfast,” he answers, right on her heels. “A lot of breakfast. I’m starving.”

Thirty-five minutes later, Quinn is staring at the Working Man special: bacon, link sausage, ham slices, scrambled eggs, hash browns, biscuits, gravy, pancakes, butter, jam, fruit compote, and orange juice. 

Carrie is looking at him over her plate of fruit, yogurt, and a waffle. (The waitress wouldn’t allow her not to order the waffle, but she doesn’t have to eat it.)

“Think you can handle that?” she asks.

“Of course,” he says, spearing a link sausage with his fork, but he doesn’t look her in the eye. 

Then a thought occurs to him and, before he really considers it, he says, “So why don’t you ever eat much? I’ve always worried about that.”

Carrie doesn’t answer for several beats.

“You’ve _worried_ about it?”

“That might be too strong a word, but people need fuel, and I hardly see you eat anything. And then when you were pregnant, I just thought it wasn’t—I thought you might need...more. So, yeah, I guess I worried then.” 

Carrie takes a long drink of water. Quinn is not sure how she telegraphs irritation by drinking, but she does. She sets the glass down more sharply than necessary. 

“The reason I don’t eat much, Quinn, is because lithium increases the appetite, and can lead to significant weight gain. When I started it, I promised myself that I would control my weight. I was always pretty disciplined about food and exercise, anyway, but the meds for my condition really gave me something to hang it on. But I get what I need, and I made sure Franny did, too.” 

Quinn swallows a forkful of scrambled egg while Carrie speaks, and watches a succession of emotions cross her face: irritation, embarrassment, defensiveness. 

_Fuck_ , he thinks, which is weird because that would suggest he knows he’s treading on dangerous ground, but rather than backing away, he starts tap dancing right there, on that same precarious spot. 

“I know you did, Carrie, I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. Franny is perfect. Not that I know much about babies. But given everything that happened to you during that pregnancy, it’s a miracle that she’s healthy. Your diet was probably the least of the things I worried about.” 

Carrie’s lips are pursed and the vertical lines between her eyebrows stand out in the morning sunlight. In a split second, she has chucked irritation, embarrassment, and defensiveness overboard to make room for a full load of anger.

Quinn, panicked, keeps talking, both out loud, to Carrie, and inside, to himself. It’s hard to carry on two conversations that way, but unfortunately, he is managing. 

_What is wrong with me? What the fuck is wrong with me? Why can’t I control my mouth anymore?_

He realizes he’s about to go on another gut-spilling jag like yesterday’s, when he threw his entire emotional hand on the table. It worked out then, but those were very different circumstances. 

Not that his mouth cares.

“Me being worried about your pregnancy wasn’t me judging you, Carrie, if that’s what you think. I was just very...invested...in you having a healthy kid. More than might be normal for a friend. _Way_ more than might be normal since I was in love with you, and it wasn’t my baby.”

Quinn stares blankly at the wall behind Carrie. He cannot believe what he just said. 

“What the fuck’s business was it of yours?” Carrie says. Her voice is quiet, but she is furious. Quinn has heard this tone from her before, but it has never really shaken him the way it does right now. The stakes today are higher. Much higher.

“Can we talk about this later?” Quinn says after a long silence. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. Not now.”

“But you did bring it up, Quinn, so I want to talk about it. Now.”

Quinn looks directly at Carrie. His eyes harden a little, and his face settles into the stubborn, immovable lines that she has come to know well. It pisses Carrie off even more.

“Don’t do this, Quinn. You started this, and you need to finish it. Why were you so ‘invested’ in my pregnancy?”

“Carrie, I am not talking about this right now.”

“Qui—”

“I am warning you not to push this,” Quinn interrupts. He speaks slowly, and fixes Carrie with a cold, unsettling stare, one that she saw for the first time in Astrid’s garage in Pakistan, and one that she’d hoped never to see again.

Carrie feels a shock of fear—not fear for her physical safety, but fear that she is about to cross a line that she cannot uncross. Because her mouth, like Quinn’s, is bent on fucking her this morning.

“Or, what, Quinn? What happens if I push this? You have spent the last couple of years asking me rude questions, and judging my professional and personal decisions, including, apparently, my prenatal care, all while you sit around not giving up _anything_ about yourself. You and Saul listened to me fuck Brody—you turned up the goddamn volume, is what I heard—but I didn’t know your age until yesterday. You fucking looked at my _medical record_ s after you shot me, and then thought you needed to remind me that I was pregnant in case I’d forgotten, but I _still_ don’t know your real name. You look at the rest of us with those disappointed eyes, or wounded eyes, or annoyed eyes, or the ice king eyes you just gave me, and we’re all supposed to fall in line. We’re all supposed to quake in our boots because Peter Quinn, square-jawed enigma, patron saint of assassins with a heart of gold, doesn’t like what we’re doing, or who we’re doing it with, or the questions we have the nerve to ask him. So, when you decide to criticize my eating habits, and then drop in that you had what sounds like an unnatural attachment to my pregnancy and my baby, neither of which had _anything_ to do with you at all, and then decide you’re done talking about it before you give me any explanation, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You’ve got a fuckload of nerve, Quinn. But I will fucking ‘push it’ if I want to.”

Quinn maintains eye contact with Carrie the entire time she is talking. His expression doesn’t change much, but it does change, and Carrie, if she weren’t temporarily shielded by the forces of her own anger, would have felt the subtle but unmistakable shift in his eyes like a body blow. Quinn pulls money out of his wallet and tosses it on the table, then leaves the restaurant. He doesn’t say a word.

Carrie doesn’t look at him as he walks away; she suspects he must look very much the way he did when he walked out of Astrid’s garage, and she doesn’t want to see that. She’d been flooded with such a goodness of heart and spirit in that bizarre moment, and seen so clearly that she wanted Peter Quinn to know something of love and happiness, and the memory of that feeling is a rebuke to her recognition that just now she has been mean, on purpose, and for no real reason. He had, probably unintentionally, hurt her feelings, and infuriated her by refusing to talk about it, but she has overreacted and she knows it. 

The waitress stops at her table, and despite the nearly untouched food, asks if she is ready for the bill. Carrie nods, then wonders, horrified, how much of what she’d said had been heard. There were only a couple of other occupied tables in the restaurant, so of course the waitress would have been aware there’d been an argument at table five. It would have been weirder if she hadn’t known. But Carrie had spewed an eavesdropper’s mother lode of juicy information, including the fact that Peter Quinn was an assassin. If anyone had overheard that, Carrie could have reasonably been charged with disclosing classified information without authorization.

 _Jesus H Christ_ _—_ _I just violated the espionage act in a Tennessee breakfast diner. Fuck._

Carrie tells herself that she had not been loud enough for anyone but Quinn to hear the content of her rant, but when the waitress hands her the bill, Carrie rejects her initial impulse to pass her a (traceable) credit card. Instead, she digs out more cash to supplement what Quinn left, and flees the restaurant, hoping that the Jeep is still in the parking lot, and that Quinn, and his heart, are still with her.


	11. Deep Purple

Quinn is in the driver’s seat of Carrie’s Jeep, and when she opens the passenger door, he looks at her without any apparent emotion and doesn’t say a word as he puts the car in reverse and backs out of the parking spot. 

Carrie pulls her phone out of her bag and pretends to look at something, but she can’t concentrate. 

At all. 

She knows she’s fucked something up, and she knows it’s bad. 

Quinn is less than two feet away from her, but he is gone. He is there, in the flesh, checking mirrors and turning on his indicators before changing lanes, but he is not there. It is as though whatever energy animates a human has been turned off and put away, and only the physical shell remains. 

Carrie feels sick. She wants to throw up, and the mild headache that has been bothering her off and on since the roller coaster is ratcheting up. Even so, it only takes her about two minutes (two minutes that feel like as many hours) before she realizes Quinn is driving the wrong direction.

“I don’t think this is the right way,” she says quietly. “We’re supposed to be going east.”

“I need to make a detour,” Quinn says. “It’ll set you back about an hour and a half, but you’ll be home tonight.” 

Carrie’s gut clenches. “Detour? What kind of detour?”

“I’m going back to the airport. I booked a flight to National. It leaves at 10:30.” Quinn’s voice is disturbingly neutral, and his face, the half of it she can see, is calm. His driving is controlled, and he is cruising along in the fast lane at a steady, reasonable 69 miles an hour. 

Carrie is speechless. A dozen separate responses are swirling through her head, lining up to be first out of her mouth, but all of them are some combination of confusion and anger, and neither of those are her primary emotion. Confusion and anger are the first and easiest emotions for Carrie to manifest—confusion is safely neutral and anger is her oldest companion—but the feeling that is overwhelming her is sadness. 

She feels as though she is drowning, slowly, in a deep and profound sorrow, the kind that has no interest in words or self-expression. 

It only wants to sleep. 

Carrie digs in her bag for a pain reliever, swallows it dry, and then turns her head away from Quinn, toward the passenger door, and closes her eyes. 

Carrie wakes up later, when the car stops and Quinn turns off the engine. She is becoming conscious as Quinn is shaking her shoulder. 

“Wake up. I’m leaving.” 

_At least he wasn’t going to leave me passed out here,_ she thinks. Her eyes flutter open, and she squints a little in the sunlight. The acetaminophen she took earlier has lessened the throbbing in her head, but it’s...still throbbing. She flashes back to their argument, and to the beginning of this awful car ride, and her stomach heaves again. Unaccountably, though, she is feeling a little less sad and a little more hopeful. Not much more, but a little more. Something must have happened while she was sleeping, an already-forgotten dream, perhaps, or her brain just taking advantage of the rest to sort her thoughts and feelings and available options, but whatever it was, she wakes up with a plan. 

As soon as Quinn sees she is conscious, he pops the trunk, hands her the car keys and exits the driver’s side. Carrie is out of the car only a split second later, and she meets him at the trunk. She waits, politely, for Quinn to retrieve his bag, then she reaches for hers. 

Quinn looks at her, and for the first time since he’d walked away from his Working Man breakfast, a flicker of emotion crosses his face. The emotion is annoyance, but, to Carrie, it’s better than nothing. 

“What are you doing, Carrie?”

“I’m flying home with you.”

“What?”

“I am flying home with you,” Carrie repeats, slowly, but casually. She slings her duffel bag over her shoulder, pulls out her phone, and starts tapping away. “Yep, there it is.” She starts walking, and looks back at Quinn. She holds up her phone. “The 10:32 am American flight to DC. There are still seats.”

“I don’t want you to fly home with me, Carrie.”

“But you can’t stop me,” she says. Her tone is more matter-of-fact than combative.

Quinn shakes his head and starts walking. 

“I am sorry, Quinn, I am more sorry than I can express, and I regret everything I said to you at breakfast. I was mean—I was cruel—and you didn’t deserve it. You did not deserve it. Yes, you hurt my feelings but—”

Quinn is already several strides ahead of her, but she sees him shake his head again, and quicken his pace. Carrie continues talking in spite of the growing distance. She just talks louder.

“Well, you did hurt my feelings, but I’m pretty sure you didn’t mean to. Not like I meant to hurt yours. I made the things that I love about you—your devotion and decency and sense of honor—sound _bad_ just to be hurtful. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I am so sorry, Quinn, and I’m going to fix it. I’m not leaving you alone until you believe that I love you because of the way you are, not in spite of it.”

Quinn is probably 20 feet ahead of her, and he’s coming up on a group of other travelers waiting at a crosswalk. Traffic is whizzing by, and he has no choice but to stop and wait for the light, and Carrie catches up to him. He continues to look straight ahead, and she continues talking. Her voice is quieter now, but determined.

“So, if you won't stay in the car with me, I’m getting on your flight, and I’m going to talk my way into the seat next to you. I told you the other day I’m not the type to give up. You _know_ I don’t fucking give up. I’m going to make sure you know how sorry I am for hurting you. I know it didn’t sound like it earlier, but I love you, Quinn, and I want you to be happy. I love you, and I respect you, more than anyone else I know. I love how smart you are, and your passion, and whatever it is that made you care about my pregnancy when no one else in your shoes would. I love that you worried about my nutrition. I love how strongly you feel about bathrooms and the ending of _Titanic._ I love how you made those people on the roller coaster shut up. I love how I kinda believe you can do _anything_ , Quinn, especially since I think most other humans are useless idiots. I love you, and I like you, and I am so sorry I was such an awful, mean person earlier.”

The light changes, but Quinn doesn’t walk. He lets the crowd move ahead for five or ten seconds, and then he says, still without looking at her. “I don’t give a fuck, Carrie. I’m done. Two years I wasted on you. Two years where all I could think about was how amazing you were, and how much I wanted you, and how much I loved you. And you managed to blow that up in five minutes, and there is no fixing that. You’re a shitty person, and, while I wish I’d accepted it earlier, now is better than later. I just don’t care anymore.” And Quinn steps into the roadway, leaving Carrie, decimated, on the curb. 

It takes a few minutes for Carrie to regain her composure. She is still on her feet, and appears intact to anyone who might be watching, but Quinn’s words have shredded her with ballistic force. Eventually, hollowed out and dry-eyed, she heads back to the car in the covered parking garage and slips into the driver’s seat, where she sits, boneless and blank, for a long time. A very long time in which she thinks about nothing and everything, about herself and about Peter Quinn, about Franny and Brody, about her father and her mother, and what the point of this terrible and briefly wonderful month might be in her life story. 

And when she is finished thinking—because she does reach a point where she literally thinks _Fuck it, I am finished thinking about this shit_ —she checks her watch, and makes a mad, desperate run back toward the terminal.

“Ma’am, this flight has finished boarding.” The booking agent looks tired.

“How far is the gate?” Carrie asks. 

“Not very, but they are have just fin—”

“Then, please just book it. Fast. And tell them I’m coming.” 

The agent rolls her eyes, but hands Carrie a printout just a few seconds later. “You’re already checked in,” she says, but Carrie is running before she finishes.

Carrie’s duffel bag is bouncing awkwardly across her back, and her head hurts like a motherfucker, but she is fixed on getting to gate 2A in the next sixty seconds. She dodges passengers and luggage carts, and is trying to read the departure boards as she runs, trying to see if her flight is still listed as “Boarding.” Of course, she can’t read a word, but she is going to make it be so via her force of will. She _will_ make it onto this plane. She is focused.

Carrie sees Gate 3B, and heartens—only two more to go. But as she watches the jetway door at what must be 2A, she sees someone start to close it. “Shit,” she says, out loud, and picks up speed, a final burst, and as she sets foot onto the carpet that marks off the gate area, she shouts “Wait!” and waves her boarding pass. The staff person doesn’t stop quickly enough for Carrie, and she shouts, “WAIT!” again, very loudly, but suppresses her desire to to curse a young man who is only doing his job. “Please,” she says, “I have my boarding pass.” Another employee steps to Carrie, briefly examines the pass and Carrie’s ID, and nods to the young man who is standing in front of the door. He opens it, giving Carrie a look she’s seen a lot of in her life, and Carrie hurries down the jetway, breathing in big, hurried gulps, and shutting her eyes briefly against the pain of this infernal headache. 

The flight attendant looks at Carrie curiously—the gate staff has already called back to alert them to the late and agitated passenger—and asks to see her seat number. “Eleven B” the attendant says, needlessly pointing up the aisle, but Carrie ignores her because she is scanning the seats for Quinn. She is systematically looking at each passenger, and she gets to aisle seventeen or so before she sees him, staring back at her, his face incredulous. 

Carrie freezes. Her eyes are locked with Quinn’s and she is unsure of what she is seeing in them, but whatever it is, it is not cold. After what feels like an eternity, but is in reality just seconds, Quinn stands up and opens the overhead compartment. He looks away from Carrie only long enough to make sure he takes the right bag, and then he steps into the aisle and closes the distance between them in several long strides.

The entire plane is now watching; Carrie’s late arrival and odd intensity make her hard to miss, and the eye contact she is making with the tall man from the back of the plane seems to have its own force field. When he reaches Carrie, he keeps his eyes on hers, but he addresses his words to the flight attendant. 

“Ma’am,” Quinn says, “we have to get off this plane.”

The flight attendant raises both eyebrows. “Well, _she_ just got on. She apparently ran her a—ran—to make sure she made this flight.”

“Even so, we’d like to get off.”

“We’re about to back away from the gate, sir. It’s really too late.”

“Ma’am, this aircraft is not moving yet, and I need—we need—to disembark. Can you please contact whomever you need to contact?” Quinn is polite, but the flight attendant decides that everyone will be much happier if these two can resolve their situation, whatever it is, someplace other than on her flight. 

She looks at Carrie to be sure she is okay, and Carrie gives a small but reassuring nod. The attendant picks up the phone to the cockpit and exchanges a few words with the person on the other end. When she hangs up, she nods to her crewmate, who reopens the hatch he has just finished closing. The two flight attendants back up and make way for Carrie and Quinn, and as they disappear up the jetway without a word, the male flight attendant turns to his coworker and says, “I don’t know what that was, but I need a fan and a drink.”

Carrie and Quinn walk in silence along the main concourse until they pass a small intersecting hallway that leads, after maybe ten feet, to a set of swinging doors. Quinn takes Carrie by the hand and leads her through the swinging doors. 

This new hallway is as empty as he’d hoped, and before the doors make their first complete swing in the opposite direction, Quinn has Carrie against a wall, pressing himself into her, kissing her mouth, her face, her neck, one hand twisted in her hair, and the other holding her body to his with a wild, grasping need. Carrie is equally desperate; she can not get close enough to Quinn, or touch enough of him at one time to satisfy herself. Quinn is kissing her everywhere, and holding her so tightly she can barely breathe, but she presses herself against him even harder. 

Carrie makes a noise, soft and plaintive, as she feels him rise against her belly, and she backs away from their kisses to whisper breathless apologies and endearments and recantations; he interrupts her with his own whispered tumble of apologies and endearments and recantations. 

“I was afraid I’d ruined it,” Quinn says into her hair, when their kisses become less frantic. “The second I left you on the curb, I was afraid I’d ruined it. But when you showed up on that plane, Carrie…”

Quinn reaches for Carrie’s face, and frames it with both hands. He kisses her slowly, and very tenderly. “When you showed up on that plane,” he repeated, “I have never been as grateful for anything as I was for the fact that you never listen to anyone but yourself.” 

At the car, Quinn holds out his hands for the key, but Carrie gives him a kiss, instead. “How many eyes are on us?” she asks, leaning her forehead against his jaw, and running a light finger along his collar bone. 

She can feel Quinn smile. She, in turn, smiles as he scans the garage for surveillance cameras. 

“Four,” he says, but two we probably don’t need to worry about at all. One will only matter if the question is ‘did you climb in the backseat of a car with this man, Peter Quinn?’ The angle of the fourth might make for a good story at shift change—it’s looking right through the front windshield—but the distance and picture quality will keep it from going viral.”

“Hmmm,” Carrie says, planting a soft, open-mouthed kiss just below Quinn’s ear. “I don’t think that’ll be a problem. I’ve got a blanket in the trunk that can cover the gap, and I’ll just be sure to keep my head down.” 

About fifteen minutes later, Quinn, predictably, has drifted into a gauzy, light catnap, and Carrie, tucked between his arms, is looking up at his face and feeling proud of her work. She sometimes wishes she could put this skill set on a resume. Honestly, if people could see how un-stoic Peter Quinn was just a few minutes earlier....

Well, actually, she wants to keep that just for herself. 

They make good time over the next couple of hours, Quinn driving, Carrie navigating, sometimes talking, sometimes comfortably silent, and eventually deciding they need to stop for lunch. Breakfast, obviously, was a fail, so this lunch feels a little like a do-over. 

Quinn addresses the matter head on. “Let’s pick somewhere for lunch, but before we get out of this car, I want to tell you something. I don’t want this conversation hanging over my head for another meal.” 

“Okay,” says Carrie, “but you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“No, I need to.”

It occurs to Carrie that this new tell-it-all Quinn has a short shelf life, and she should take advantage of it. So she does, saying nothing, and waiting for him to begin in his own time.

It is clear from his first words—tight and strained and very quiet—that it is difficult for him to assign language to his non-verbal scrum of emotion and memory. 

“The kid in Caracas fucked me up, Carrie. I won’t—I...can’t—” Quinn stops, unable to speak for a moment, and then starts again. “Caracas made me think about my own son, and why I didn’t stay to be his father, and how dangerous the world is for everyone, and especially for children. It made me rethink my decision to leave him—like, who the fuck am I that I thought my job was more important than him? Or that I was going to protect him in a different way by continuing my work. Who did I think I was fooling with that shit?

“That’s why you chose to leave?” Carrie says, softly.

“That was part of it. The other part, probably the real part, was that I didn’t think I’d be a good father. I was afraid I’d be...I don’t know. Bad at it. That I’d break him.”

“Anyway, I couldn’t stop thinking about my son after Caracas. I went to see him, Carrie. I met him. Just for a minute, but I met him. It was hard, and his mother was pissed at first, but I told her what had happened. Just the broad strokes. And she wasn’t mad anymore, but it didn’t change the fact that I’d chosen to not be a father to my beautiful little boy, or that I’d ended the life of another one.” 

“All of that was going on—nightmares about Caracas, and regretting my choices, and seeing the son I was too chickenshit to parent—and then you wouldn’t stand down against Franklin, and Dar made me shoot you. So, when I found out you were pregnant, it fucking destroyed me. In addition to hurting you, which was bad enough, I realized I’d nearly killed your baby. It was a bad night, Carrie, and I got very drunk, and I was millimeters away from putting a bullet in my brain.”

“But then I realized that I had _not_ killed your baby, that it was still alive. I realized that twice before, I’d nearly killed Brody, but something stopped me, and if not for that, the baby wouldn’t exist. And yes, I shot you, but I did it because I was the only one I trusted not to cause you serious harm. So, if not for me, again, the baby might have ceased to be. And I guess I latched on to that idea—that your baby was a kind of redemption for me. Like, maybe I was meant to protect it in some way.”

“Plus, it was _your_ baby, and my feelings for you outweighed my feelings about Brody. She was your child with Brody, but she became my reason for not putting a bullet in my own head. That’s why I was so invested in your pregnancy. And it’s part of why I fell head over heels for Franny the minute I laid eyes on her. The other part is that she’s just a perfect little person of her own, independent of you, or Brody, or my stupid fairy godfather delusions.” 

Carrie does not have words. She does not want to cry, which she knows will undo both of them, and she knows there is nothing anyone could say that would heal Quinn’s deep purple bruise of sorrow, remorse, and self-loathing. She just takes his right hand, and holds it, and it is at least another hour before they finally sit down for lunch.


	12. That's Mostly in the Movies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carrie and Quinn discuss their future plans, and encounter the next complication in their day.

Between emotional exhaustion and a carb-rich lunch, Quinn realizes he’s too tired to drive. “Would you mind if I took a nap for a while?” he asks, handing Carrie the keys. 

“Of course not,” she says, standing on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. “I put you through the wringer today. Driving is the least I can do.”

“Thank you. It’ll just be for a little while. But I’d say we put each other through the wringer. I said and did a lot of shitty things, too.”

“Yeah, you did, but we just spent an hour and a half apologizing to each other, so we probably don’t need to bring it up again. We’re moving on. Right?” Carrie unlocks the car, and the brief burst of horn punctuates her sentence.

“Yep. Moving on,” Quinn says as he drops into the passenger seat, adjusts it to make room for his legs, and reclines the seat. 

When Quinn closes his eyes, he indulges in a brief round of self-flagellation. _Move on...sure. I just told her what a fucking nut-case I am: briefly suicidal, a savior complex, weird about my kid, and even weirder about hers. It’s going to take a while for it to sink in, but she’s going to freak out in a few days. A few weeks, tops. I just want to have lots of sex and make sure nothing bad happens to her. And make her smile. That’s it. But all this fucking conversation is ruining it. I’ve got to pull together a plan to counter my crazy. But first on the list is keeping my mouth shut._

“Quinn?” Carrie says softly. “Were you just thinking about trying to avoid talking? About us, I mean? 

Quinn’s eyes fly open. “What the fuck, Carrie? Why did you ask that?” 

“That _is_ what you were thinking, wasn’t it? This is so cool! I was more or less thinking the same thing—that I’ve been way too chatty the past couple of days with you—and it suddenly occurred to me that you were thinking it too.”

“Cool? No. That’s way different than cool, Carrie. That’s...witchy.”

“No, it’s not, Quinn. Calm down. It’s just being on the same wavelength. I always know what Saul and my dad are—were—thinking, too. Maggie, not so much.”

“I don’t know how I feel about this, Carrie. I don’t want you reading my mind.”

“Well, I can’t help it. You can probably do it, too, if you just pay attention. For instance, what am I thinking now?” She casts a sidelong glance at him.

He looks back at her for a long moment, then narrows his eyes. “You can’t do that while you’re driving.”

“See? I told you. You can read my mind, too.”

Quinn shakes his head and smiles. 

“But,” Carrie continues, “I didn’t finish. Just after I thought ‘Quinn’s thinking the same thing,’ I also thought, ‘And you’re both wrong. You can’t just shut down—that’s how the pair of you got so fucked up in the first place. Maybe don’t yammer on about _everything_ , but at least talk about the important stuff.’ 

“I’m not saying I agree, but what’s important stuff versus unimportant stuff? Just so I know.” 

“Unimportant is, like, I’ve had a bad day at work, and you’re chewing too loud during dinner. I should maybe keep that to myself.”

“But, the fact that you’re assuming we’ll be spending time together after work, that’s important, right?” 

Carrie is a little confused. “Well, yes, if I’d said this three or four days ago, when our status was less clear. But now? No, because I feel like we’ve already established that we’re a couple, which would imply that we’ll be spending evenings together.”

“Many evenings, or all evenings?”

Carrie gives Quinn a sharp but brief look—she is driving at 80 miles an hour, after all—then turns eyes back to the highway. 

“Are you talking about our living arrangements?”

“Yes. My lease is up in six weeks, and I’m assuming you and Franny can’t go on living with your sister forever. So, do we get one place, or two?” Quinn sounds casual, but he’s not. Not in the least.

“Don’t we have to decide on work, first?” 

“Do we?”

“Yes. We’re supposed to be deciding what we’re doing, and keeping each other ‘posted.’” There is irony but no sting in Carrie’s reference. 

“Oh, right...Sorry about that, too. Okay, then, here’s my ‘post’—I’m leaving the Agency as soon as I can. I don’t know what’s next, but I’m working on a plan.”

“Any possibilities? Even vague?”

“I don’t know...law enforcement? Security consulting?”

Carrie shrugs.

“No? What do you see me doing?”

“Teaching? Maybe area studies, or counter-terrorism.”

“Teaching people? No way.”

“Gigolo? You’re better at sex than I expected.”

Quinn sighs. “I’m tempted to ask, Carrie, but I think this is one of those things you should keep to yourself.”

“I think you’re right. So, this is fun. What can Peter Quinn do for the next chapter of his life? I’m just gonna spitball here. Landscaper. Short order cook. Air traffic controller. Race car driver. Construction worker. Lawyer. Bouncer. Any one of these would suit some part of your skill set or personality.”

“Thanks,” Quinn says. “I’ll tuck your weird little list away and consider it. What about you? Are you going to leave?” 

“I _think_ so, but I have to be strategic about the timing, what with Franny, and having to rent a new place.”

“So we’re back to housing. My question stands. One place or two?” Quinn still sounds casual, but he is still not. He cannot believe he is having this conversation. With Carrie.

“Renew your lease for one year, or month-to-month, if you can. It’ll take us months to sort everything out. In a year or less, we’ll be better positioned for one place, and we’ll only have to move once.” Carrie sounds casual, but she is not. She cannot believe she is having this conversation. With Quinn.

“I’m not going to renew my current apartment, no matter what.” Quinn is thinking of the complex manager, a young woman of whom he is very fond. He knows she had, at least briefly, harbored feelings for him, and he doesn’t want to parade his relationship with Carrie in her face. Wisely, though, he finds another excuse. “If you’re gonna be around a lot, I need more bathrooms.” 

Quinn must have eventually drifted off, because the next thing he is conscious of is a shriek from Carrie, and a sudden, screeching halt that lifts him from his supine position and slams him into the shoulder belt hovering above him.

“Oh, fuck,” he hears Carrie say, and he is awake instantly. He sits up, looks at Carrie to see if she is okay—she is—and then out at the scene in front of them.

A tractor trailer sits crosswise across three lanes of traffic. It has jack-knifed just beyond a blind curve in the highway, and three smaller vehicles—two sedans and a commercial van—have collided with it. The van and one of the sedans, a newer blue Mercedes, are wedged underneath the middle of the trailer, hood first. Smoke is drifting up from the front of the van. The other sedan, a small yellow Hyundai, is lodged nearer the back end of the trailer, but it has hit trunk-first, presumably as it spun or skidded when the driver slammed on the brakes. 

The highway traffic has been light to moderate their whole trip, and Carrie and Quinn’s car had been travelling for a half mile or so in a bubble that was empty of other vehicles. Now, though, both of them turn to look out the rear window and see a clutch of four more cars gaining on them rapidly. Carrie immediately makes for the left shoulder, pumping the brakes to flash warning lights to the oncoming drivers. It’s hard to tell if the other cars are slowing. She stops, and then quickly decides to back up about 75 feet. 

Carrie starts to open her door as the car comes to a stop, but Quinn restrains her. “Wait—don't get out until these other cars stop. Better they hit the Jeep than flesh. Just call 911.” Which Carrie does, providing as much information as she can in a voice that sounds calm to the dispatcher, but in which Quinn can hear her stress. 

While Carrie is talking to 911, Quinn is watching the oncoming traffic. Three of the four cars stop without issue, but one, a small pickup truck, barrels along in a middle lane, seemingly unaware of what is happening around him. As the pickup approaches, Quinn can see the driver’s mouth moving, and a flash of expression on his face. _Fuck...he’s arguing with someone on the phone. This is not gonna end well. Shit_ _—_

The pickup driver becomes aware of his situation too late, much too late, and hits the brakes, sending smoke up from shredding tires. The truck fishtails violently, then flips and rolls twice. Carrie and Quinn watch, horrified, as the driver is thrown from the truck and lands in a heap in the fast lane, not far from where they’d first stopped.

“Shit,” Quinn says quietly, and is out of the car before Carrie can blink. He is running toward the pickup truck driver, but he turns back and shouts to Carrie as she steps out to follow him. “Get people to help you stop traffic. Stop traffic. NOW.”

If there’s anything Carrie does well, it is browbeat people into doing things they might not normally do, and she runs to each of the recently-halted vehicles, instructing them to turn on their blinkers, and meet her back on the left shoulder, where they are most visible to oncoming traffic. Those three cars yield five more people, all adults, and, at Carrie’s urging, they jump around, wave their arms and make exaggerated, palms-out “stop” gestures. Within two minutes, traffic has stopped, and the backup has extended to the high-visibility straightaway before the curve.

As soon as the oncoming traffic issue is under control, Carrie hands off the effort to the most level-headed person on the scene, a small woman with the voice and personality of a drill sergeant, and races back to Quinn. 

The scene at the tractor trailer is not good.

The first thing that she sees is that a tarp—probably from the back of her car—is in the middle of the fast lane, held down by rocks on each corner. Carrie gasps, realizing that the pickup truck driver she and Quinn watched sail out of his tumbling truck is dead. She has lived and worked in combat zones for years, and she has seen people die in horrible ways, and it is always a disturbing, unreal experience, but there is an added shock when it happens in a time and place that you believed was safe just seconds before it turned deadly. 

Further ahead, the scene at the jack-knifed trailer makes her catch her breath. The van has caught fire, and is throwing flames and smoke high into the air. Four people who Carrie can only assume are accident victims are seated or lying down in the grassy median strip beyond the shoulder, and two other people, passersby like Carrie and Quinn, are doing their best to tend to them. 

Passengers from stopped traffic have migrated to the scene, and they are standing at what they hope is a reasonable distance, but two people are standing close to the small Hyundai that is lodged backward under the end of the trailer. It is only about fifteen feet from the burning van.

Carrie doesn’t see Quinn right away, and she is confused until his head suddenly appears above the open front door on the passenger side. He must have been crouched down, and since the car is angled toward Carrie such that the driver side headlight is pointing at her like an arrow, he was blocked from her view. She sees him speak to one of the men standing near him, and then he disappears again. 

Carrie breaks into a run at the site of Quinn. One of the two men at the little Hyundai tries to wave her off, but she ignores him. “Quinn,” she says as she nears, “what’s happening?” As she passes the front of the car and rounds the corner to the passenger side, Quinn looks up at her from where he is crouched. His face is calm, but his eyes are trying to tell her something she doesn’t quite understand. 

Quinn turns back to the person in the passenger seat, a young girl of maybe eleven or twelve. Carrie sees that the seat belt is off, and since there is no apparent damage to the front end of the car, she can't imagine that she’s pinned at the legs. Carrie doesn’t understand why she’s still in the car. Then, Quinn shifts his position a bit, and Carrie sees what is wrong. A large shard of mirrored glass protrudes from the child’s chest, and Carrie realizes, with a sickening drop in her abdomen, that the shard comes from a full length mirror that was being transferred in the back of the car. The mirror broke in the accident, and a large piece of it, probably fifteen inches long, penetrated the passenger seatback, pinning the little girl where she sat. Some blood—but not as much as might be expected—soaks the child’s shirt. 

Quinn is talking to the child calmly. “Yep,” he is saying, “I’ve jumped out of airplanes a million times. It’s pretty exciting, but it’s not for everyone. Are you sure that’s something you think you could do?”

The little girl nods, her large brown eyes focused on Quinn’s. “Uh huh,” she says, weakly, “I’m not afraid of things.”

“I can see,” Quinn says. “You’re being very brave today. When we’re done here, I’m going to give you my email address and we can keep in touch. In a few years, when you’re ready to apply, I’ll be happy to write you a letter of recommendation.” 

Quinn looks up at Carrie, who has put her hand on his shoulder. “This is my girlfriend, Carrie. Carrie, this is Nadia. Nadia wants to go to West Point when she grows up, I’m going to write her a recommendation. In the meanwhile, I’ve been telling her some of the fun things people do in the military.”

“Hi, Nadia,” Carrie says, and gives her the biggest smile she can muster. The little girl smiles back, but it is a weak smile, and her complexion is ashen. They can feel the heat of the fire, less than fifteen feet away, and Carrie sees perspiration bubbling across Nadia’s forehead. 

“Carrie will write you a letter, too,” Quinn says. “She does important work now, but by the time you graduate high school, she’ll probably be even more important. Her recommendation will mean a lot.”

“How do you know she’ll still be your girlfriend then?” Nadia asked. “My dad has a new girlfriend every few months.”

Quinn smiles at the little girl. “If your dad knew Carrie, he’d hold on to her. She’s a cool lady. And you know what? I need to talk to her for a minute. We’ll be right back.”

Quinn stands up and guides Carrie to the front of the car. The hood is up, and the man Quinn had spoken to when Carrie first caught sight of him backs out from under it. 

“Okay, man, the battery is disconnected.”

“Thank you,” he says, then looks at Carrie. “Where is the EMS team? Fire? Cops? We need help.”

“I don’t know,” Carrie says. She pulls her phone out of her bag and checks the time of her 911 call. It was nine minutes earlier. How can it be less than ten minutes ago? It feels like hours. “Yeah, where the fuck are they?” she says. “Traffic is under control back there, at least.”

“Good job,” Quinn says to Carrie, then looks at the two men who have been working with him for the past several minutes. “But now we’ve got to get this little girl out of the car.”

“We can’t remove that piece of glass,” Carrie says, alarmed.

“I know, but we’ve still got to get her out of the way of this fire.”

One of the other Good Samaritans, not the one who disconnected the battery, holds up a small tool kit in Quinn’s direction. “He’s gonna take the whole seat out.” 

“What?” Carrie says. 

“I’m going to take the seat out,” says Quinn. He keeps his voice very low. “I’ve done it before, but never with someone in it.” He takes the proffered tool bag, then answers the question that is plainly written on Carrie’s face. “We learn a lot of odd skills. Gotta be inventive. Predictability equals failure.” There is no need to explain to Carrie who “we” are, or why predictability might be a problem. 

Quinn returns to Nadia’s side, while Battery Guy climbs into the driver’s seat. Carrie moves back, out of the way, but to a position where she can mostly see what is going on. 

“Okay, sweetheart,” says Quinn to Nadia, “the firefighters are going to be here any minute, but in the meanwhile, we’re going to unbolt this whole seat so that we can carry you over to where your sister is. We’re worried that the van fire may jump over here, so we want to get you away.” Quinn’s voice is calm and conversational.

“Will the van blow up?” Nadia asks.

“Probably not,” says Quinn, “I think that’s mostly in the movies, but your car or the trailer could catch, and we don’t want you trapped here. So, the first thing that we’re going to do is to slide your seat as close to the glove compartment as we can without hurting you, or messing with the glass. I need you to sit very still, and try not to move your upper body. Hold on to the seat and lift your feet.”

Nadia looks at Quinn for a few seconds. She is afraid, and very hesitant, and the piece of mirror protruding from her chest is freaking her out, but she decides to trust this man.

“Okay,” she says, very softly. 

Nadia grasps the seat cushion and lifts her feet just enough to clear the floor. She winces as the chest muscles that don’t seem like they’d be needed for those actions, but in fact, are, send shooters of pain through her small body. 

“Good girl,” says Quinn. He releases the horizontal position lever—thank God it’s not electric—then says to Battery Guy in the driver seat “Slide it forward slowly.” Together, they inch the passenger seat forward until Quinn says stop. 

He locks the seat in place, then stands up and moves to the floor of the back seat, where he shouts for Tool Bag guy to hand him a flashlight and the bag of socket wrenches. Quinn is quiet for a while as he unscrews the back bolts, but eventually he stands up and moves back to the front seat. His head and face are soaked with sweat. 

Quinn and Battery Guy slide the seat all the way back, again very slowly, and Quinn murmurs encouraging words to Nadia, who is crying silently, but is holding very still. 

There is a loud pop from the van, and a flaming piece of tire lands less than a foot away from the open driver side door. Toolbag Guy gives a shout, then rushes around toward the driver side and stomps out the flame. As soon as the seat is latched in place and Quinn starts unscrewing the front bolts, Battery Guy gives Toolbag Guy a grateful thumbs-up. 

Quinn pops his head up over the car door. “I need wire cutters,” he says to no one in particular. “Or scissors, or a knife. Fast.” He is now dripping in sweat, and the tiny explosions from the van are getting louder and more frequent. 

Carrie starts to head back to her car—she knows there is a seat belt cutter there that might work—but Toolbag Guy has it covered. 

“Look in the front pocket of the kit,” he says to Quinn. His voice is tight. 

Quinn finds what he’s looking for in the bag, and he wrestles with something under the seat for another thirty seconds. Finally, he rises up and says something to Nadia, very quietly. He asks Battery Guy, who is the bigger of his two cohorts, to come stand by him, and directs Toolbag Guy to take his place in the driver seat.

“The seat is free of the track and connectors. We’re going to slide it forward, lift it straight up out of the track, and extricate it as best we can without jostling Nadia. Clear?” 

It wasn’t clear at all how this was going to happen, but Toolbag and Battery decide, much like Nadia did, that this calm (if sweaty) man seems to know what he’s doing. They both nod, and Quinn gives them the signal to start. 

The work feels heart-stoppingly slow. They must move deliberately so as not to cause Nadia pain, or further injury, but they are having a difficult time getting the seat into a position that allows them to clear the door hatch. The fact that the shard of mirror protrudes an extra two inches out of the back of the seat isn’t helping. Finally, Quinn decides that they’re going to try to turn the seat after they pick it up, and remove it that way, with Nadia’s knees coming out first. He calls over several more people to help, and somehow, miraculously, they manage to rotate the passenger seat in mid-air without dropping it. 

As they finally clear the door hatch and start carrying Nadia and her seat toward the shoulder, three things happen at the same time: the watching crowd lets out a cheer; the sound of sirens finally makes an overdue but welcome appearance; and half of the van’s hood, the part that isn’t trapped by the bulk of the trailer, explodes about twenty feet in the air. It falls, trailing flames and sparks, on the other side of the van, the side opposite the little Hyundai, but even so, Carrie, who has been watching the entire rescue with her heart in her throat, lets out a little cry and bends over at the waist to retch.

 _This goddamn day,_ she thinks, wiping her mouth. She stands up and does her best to compose herself, then walks, less than steadily, back toward Nadia, Quinn, and his little band of heroes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was hoping to finish this story before the year is out, but I don't think that's going to happen. This chapter was exhausting. 
> 
> I have to give thanks to YouTube for showing me what tractor trailers look like when they jack-knife, how to remove a bucket seat, and how socket-wrenches work (I didn't end up adding that detail because it's boring, but it helped to know.)
> 
> Also, thank you to anyone who has read this far. It has been so much fun to write this, and to get your kudos and kind comments. If anyone has any feedback on the pacing of this chapter (or any chapter), please let me know. I don't write this sort of thing very often, so it would be helpful. I'll moderate comments so that you don't have to worry about being too frank. I honestly have very thick writing skin :-)
> 
> If you're reading this before 2020 is done, I'm wishing you a quiet end to this bullshit year. If you read it after, congratulations on making it through! I guess we don't know that 2021 will be better, but we know 2020 has been garbage, so good riddance, and let's hope for the best.


End file.
